marrying the previous 2 posts of course leads to this: if the self doesn't change (that is to say: we are always the seer not the seen, which fits the facts that we can't see ourselves, and other people only "think" they can, as we only think that we "see" them) ... if the self doesn't change then it makes no difference to the self whether we are in Africa or in Russia. Only the surroundings change, we do not: indeed only the surrounding change BECAUSE we do not change. Then it also follows that it makes no difference whether we are surrounded by women or not, or money or not, or power or not, or a healthy body or not, or a body or not, or even a consciousness or not! If there is anything that you think is consciousness, then it to is not-you!
Now this awareness, and this argument, is good for momentary illumination but it is too light a diet for me at the moment. I still crave the baser things, things of higher calories. But I'm getting there I hope, decade by decade, enjoying a progressively less rich diet and purer experience.
Saturday, 31 May 2008
Reincarnation and Liberation
There are many videos of Prabhupada on You-Tube. Watching one I was given a kick. I only took on a short section but it has prompted a insight toward reincarnation.
Certainly from the outside there is no mystery to reincarnation. It is accepted as fact that the world is a sequence of events triggering one another. When anything happens we instinctively look back in time to see what caused it, and we naturally spend our days trying to work out what the future will be by extrapolating from the present. Time and existence are so connected. It is no mystery then that at some level human beings are caused. Sperms/eggs, parents, cell division, embryo-genesis: conclusion I am caused... at some level anyway. Look into the past before I was born - the letter my mum sent my Dad calling the relationship off and the chance meeting before it arrived where she changed her mind - all these things before I existed that led to the arising of what is called Alva.
But on the inside it is harder. While the brain has grown and is nourished by food, it's hard to see how the ideas themselves are! This is the Ouroboros again. Mind is grander than material existence, it is only because we are conscious that there is a world at all! After all material existence is just an idea... right? Daniel Dennett for example disagrees, I have argued the case before.
People like Dennett, like Dawkins and their ilk, it seems to me they are afraid of themselves and write themselves out of the picture at every step. Obsessed with objectivity and the publishing of their work, no time is given to what is private, what won't be published, what might be called, normally, themselves. It is no less objective, just private. It is no less objective that it can't be measured and "quantized" (I use the 'z' to give it an American "spin" i.e. being inauthentic and artificial). Big argument not getting stuck on this here... and I do argue for the self being a narrative myth myself but that can only be done because the mind is not! No cartesian theatres here, mind is transcendent even of such ideas!
Sitting comfortably with the inside view Prabhupada asks an interesting question. We move to another room, but have we moved? Sitting here, sitting there are we any different?
I thought last night were I to fly to Africa I might say that I am in Africa (which is a joke since the place is huge and the word very small) but asked where are you you will say I am in Africa. Asked then where is Africa? we might reasonable answer it is outside me! Fly to Russia and ask the same questions. Russia is also outside me. And so on.
Everywhere is always outside me. This never changes no matter where I am. So While I may move in the sense that my body moves and the surrounding change, for me I am always here. It is like my friend argued: it is because we don't change that the world changes.
So we never really change, it is only the world that changes. Now I know this seems to contradict the no-substance argument ... that there is no fixed self ... don't get into that here .. it's a different subject.
So Prabhupada asked, if sitting in Africa or sitting in Russia is always "sitting here" when it happens what makes us think that after death things are any different? We never change only the world changes, be that moving the body to different places or more profoundly having the body aging and changing, or even more radically changing the form of body completely.
We can't see Reincarnation happening now because we are alive, any more than you can see moving to another room now because you are reading a computer screen, but when it happens just watch it. It happens... you don't! and because you don't happen, it can happen.
This is true self. And so be liberate a step further.
Now the next level is the realisation that self is empty. This is stage two of non-self. Stage 1 is realising that all things are not-myself (they are outside) , that myself is apart and unchanging. Part 2 is complete unattachment from this inside self as shown in this response to the first stanza:
The body is a bo-tree
The mind is a bright mirror in a stand
Take care to wipe it all the time
And allow no dust to cling.
There is no bo-tree
Nor the stand of a mirror bright
Since all is empty from the beginning
Where can the dust alight
[Platform Sutra]
The world is distinct and apart from myself.
Myself is neither of this world
Nor another, neither in matter nor in spirit
It is simply nowhere to behold.
Certainly from the outside there is no mystery to reincarnation. It is accepted as fact that the world is a sequence of events triggering one another. When anything happens we instinctively look back in time to see what caused it, and we naturally spend our days trying to work out what the future will be by extrapolating from the present. Time and existence are so connected. It is no mystery then that at some level human beings are caused. Sperms/eggs, parents, cell division, embryo-genesis: conclusion I am caused... at some level anyway. Look into the past before I was born - the letter my mum sent my Dad calling the relationship off and the chance meeting before it arrived where she changed her mind - all these things before I existed that led to the arising of what is called Alva.
But on the inside it is harder. While the brain has grown and is nourished by food, it's hard to see how the ideas themselves are! This is the Ouroboros again. Mind is grander than material existence, it is only because we are conscious that there is a world at all! After all material existence is just an idea... right? Daniel Dennett for example disagrees, I have argued the case before.
People like Dennett, like Dawkins and their ilk, it seems to me they are afraid of themselves and write themselves out of the picture at every step. Obsessed with objectivity and the publishing of their work, no time is given to what is private, what won't be published, what might be called, normally, themselves. It is no less objective, just private. It is no less objective that it can't be measured and "quantized" (I use the 'z' to give it an American "spin" i.e. being inauthentic and artificial). Big argument not getting stuck on this here... and I do argue for the self being a narrative myth myself but that can only be done because the mind is not! No cartesian theatres here, mind is transcendent even of such ideas!
Sitting comfortably with the inside view Prabhupada asks an interesting question. We move to another room, but have we moved? Sitting here, sitting there are we any different?
I thought last night were I to fly to Africa I might say that I am in Africa (which is a joke since the place is huge and the word very small) but asked where are you you will say I am in Africa. Asked then where is Africa? we might reasonable answer it is outside me! Fly to Russia and ask the same questions. Russia is also outside me. And so on.
Everywhere is always outside me. This never changes no matter where I am. So While I may move in the sense that my body moves and the surrounding change, for me I am always here. It is like my friend argued: it is because we don't change that the world changes.
So we never really change, it is only the world that changes. Now I know this seems to contradict the no-substance argument ... that there is no fixed self ... don't get into that here .. it's a different subject.
So Prabhupada asked, if sitting in Africa or sitting in Russia is always "sitting here" when it happens what makes us think that after death things are any different? We never change only the world changes, be that moving the body to different places or more profoundly having the body aging and changing, or even more radically changing the form of body completely.
We can't see Reincarnation happening now because we are alive, any more than you can see moving to another room now because you are reading a computer screen, but when it happens just watch it. It happens... you don't! and because you don't happen, it can happen.
This is true self. And so be liberate a step further.
Now the next level is the realisation that self is empty. This is stage two of non-self. Stage 1 is realising that all things are not-myself (they are outside) , that myself is apart and unchanging. Part 2 is complete unattachment from this inside self as shown in this response to the first stanza:
The body is a bo-tree
The mind is a bright mirror in a stand
Take care to wipe it all the time
And allow no dust to cling.
There is no bo-tree
Nor the stand of a mirror bright
Since all is empty from the beginning
Where can the dust alight
[Platform Sutra]
The world is distinct and apart from myself.
Myself is neither of this world
Nor another, neither in matter nor in spirit
It is simply nowhere to behold.
aretez ou allez
The Yahoo article has precipitated further progress on this long running problem... the "my muse" situation...
Just to recap recent thoughts... the day we met I experienced both allez (go) and aretez (stop). Allez because she was giving me the green light and aretez because I knew "this was it" and I had finally met the girl of my dreams. But in that conversation the green light went amber - she was 17 and I knew that this could never be for real. The next day I overheard a conversation: she had this millionaire boyfriend in Kensington and so thought that friendship would be best until I knew the situation better. She stayed with him for 2 years and I found out at the end that he cheated on her all the way. Such is young love I suppose, hearts are made to be broken (Iris, Goo Goo Dolls). Anyway she designated Friendship out of this situation and stuck to it which was not the plan, and I'm not as chivalrous as I thought and walked away. For future reference I thought that friendship ment "piss off", actually it can mean friendship. At least I thought I can still love her as friends, which I did, but it is impossible - hearts of this kind are envious, jealous and selfish!
Anyway the point? The Aretez was stronger than the allez. I was not so concerned about the green light, as the fact that this was "it". Of course to be "it" it needs a green light, but it was the peace that this afforded, the end of the road, the stopping searching, the arrival that counted. I feared if she has a millionaire boyfriend she is not interested in arretez though? She is young, her life ahead, she will be allez the whole way...
So the problem is, and why this takes decades to solve: if I move on, then I am chosing allez again. If I remain with her in my mind then it is arretez, but it is a painful stop because I still haven't resolved the selfish heart.
In Eastern religion (I mistakenly hoped she had read) the arretez is plainly the point. This is the homecoming of the soul. This is life purpose, and the distractions which make us allez simply the hollywood movie that blocks out the pain of being lost away from home.
I always thought she was so happy, it never occured to me she might ever be otherwise. This is why it was so hard for me to reconcile the feelings of utter doom that I have discovered coincided with each of her car accidents and her ultimate death. It is so tragic that the year after we lost contact she bought a gerbil. It died the very next day. She was inconsolable and her family had to drive to university to comfort her. How can she have been like this? Reminds me of the moment in that Wall when they play Comfortably Numb (my music conscious is definitely coming back). Life does hurt this is the truth, this is life, it hurts for everyone, even the goddesses. This is the Little Mermaid that we all are - the cost of having mortal existence and the chance to satisfy desires is pain in every step, even for "my muse".
I know this situation is not unique. We all have this, each has their "muse". The question is a global one, I hope the answer is too.
So I am skeptical of the call to keep running - "there are many more fish in the sea". If there is another "muse" then the last one is not "it", and so neither is the next one. "It" is a dream. There can never be aretez, only allez.
But, people do get married. Is this because of aretez, or because they are tired of allez? Marriage is breaking down, arretez doesn't seem to last very long these days and its not long before we fall in love again and allez begins. People seem more interested in "being married" than spending their life with Her. Desire is often the only motive. In cultures of strict chastity I believe many men get married young simply cos its the only "official" way to get satisfaction for desire... what a disaster awaits if this is the only motive!
Indeed desire is the problem, it distorts the mind. If I did not have desire then friendship and love would have flourished. It would have been perfection, she would have been it, we would have been happy. But desire distorts a noble mind, fills it with base thoughts and motives. I suffer from these thoughts still, but am winning the battle to cleanse them. The jealousies, the angers, the passions: all distortions of the self.
when young life is simpler because the passions are not so strong. We see things more clearly. I knew when young that what the great teachers were asking, what God ultimately wants, is not the same as what desire wants. I knew one day i would have to make a choice between Girls and God. I put this off thinking I could do both. If I became perfect then I would have the perfect girl. Not so! A girl will ask of you things that your soul cannot give, and so we debase ourselves and enter the flesh market to win and lose, buy and sell our bodies. The choice is simple: we either escape the lure completely and be liberated, or we fall in completely and die like a bee into honey. Most lives are spent walking around the honey pot rim: Death sneaks up on us while we decide!
The alpha males: the George Bests, the Hugh Hefners attract the guts. These seem on the surface to be the direction that we seek. But on closer inspection are not these pale, plastic and vulnerable people? If you are a Demon isn't it incredible easy to test these people and win? Simply take away the women and what happens... we see it all the time... alcoholism and self destruction. The demons win every time.
No to be strong and noble we have to be a bit tougher. I'm confused however because on the one hand I wish to respect women like "my muse" but on the other hand I simply cannot respect what they look for in a man. The Aryan goal, the nobility, is to know oneself, to be true to oneself, to be at home with oneself. Such men as these become a girl's best friend. Men should chose to be a girl's friend then a true boy-"friend". This honestly seems to be the case. And in that case why not jiust be everyones friend and remove sex from the picture... and this is the monastic path... it seems the only goal.
So it follows that ultimately when sex has eventually lost its attraction in this life or the next, or the next, that we humans can arrive at a peaceful aretez in deep and honest friendship.
Such is the dream! Desire for sexual intimacy is a very great demon that causes very much pain, the battle that has claimed many a valiant hero, the battle field strewn with the bodies of young contenders, their souls screaming in anguish as their eyes and minds decieve them.
Its a medaeval reconstruction, and sorely out of favour in the liberal world of today, but as far as I can see today my soul tells me its the truth. Isn't it just easier to sell out and get a girl? Sadly not for me... I seek aretez... Roxanne puts a red light in the window for a very good reason!
Just to recap recent thoughts... the day we met I experienced both allez (go) and aretez (stop). Allez because she was giving me the green light and aretez because I knew "this was it" and I had finally met the girl of my dreams. But in that conversation the green light went amber - she was 17 and I knew that this could never be for real. The next day I overheard a conversation: she had this millionaire boyfriend in Kensington and so thought that friendship would be best until I knew the situation better. She stayed with him for 2 years and I found out at the end that he cheated on her all the way. Such is young love I suppose, hearts are made to be broken (Iris, Goo Goo Dolls). Anyway she designated Friendship out of this situation and stuck to it which was not the plan, and I'm not as chivalrous as I thought and walked away. For future reference I thought that friendship ment "piss off", actually it can mean friendship. At least I thought I can still love her as friends, which I did, but it is impossible - hearts of this kind are envious, jealous and selfish!
Anyway the point? The Aretez was stronger than the allez. I was not so concerned about the green light, as the fact that this was "it". Of course to be "it" it needs a green light, but it was the peace that this afforded, the end of the road, the stopping searching, the arrival that counted. I feared if she has a millionaire boyfriend she is not interested in arretez though? She is young, her life ahead, she will be allez the whole way...
So the problem is, and why this takes decades to solve: if I move on, then I am chosing allez again. If I remain with her in my mind then it is arretez, but it is a painful stop because I still haven't resolved the selfish heart.
In Eastern religion (I mistakenly hoped she had read) the arretez is plainly the point. This is the homecoming of the soul. This is life purpose, and the distractions which make us allez simply the hollywood movie that blocks out the pain of being lost away from home.
I always thought she was so happy, it never occured to me she might ever be otherwise. This is why it was so hard for me to reconcile the feelings of utter doom that I have discovered coincided with each of her car accidents and her ultimate death. It is so tragic that the year after we lost contact she bought a gerbil. It died the very next day. She was inconsolable and her family had to drive to university to comfort her. How can she have been like this? Reminds me of the moment in that Wall when they play Comfortably Numb (my music conscious is definitely coming back). Life does hurt this is the truth, this is life, it hurts for everyone, even the goddesses. This is the Little Mermaid that we all are - the cost of having mortal existence and the chance to satisfy desires is pain in every step, even for "my muse".
I know this situation is not unique. We all have this, each has their "muse". The question is a global one, I hope the answer is too.
So I am skeptical of the call to keep running - "there are many more fish in the sea". If there is another "muse" then the last one is not "it", and so neither is the next one. "It" is a dream. There can never be aretez, only allez.
But, people do get married. Is this because of aretez, or because they are tired of allez? Marriage is breaking down, arretez doesn't seem to last very long these days and its not long before we fall in love again and allez begins. People seem more interested in "being married" than spending their life with Her. Desire is often the only motive. In cultures of strict chastity I believe many men get married young simply cos its the only "official" way to get satisfaction for desire... what a disaster awaits if this is the only motive!
Indeed desire is the problem, it distorts the mind. If I did not have desire then friendship and love would have flourished. It would have been perfection, she would have been it, we would have been happy. But desire distorts a noble mind, fills it with base thoughts and motives. I suffer from these thoughts still, but am winning the battle to cleanse them. The jealousies, the angers, the passions: all distortions of the self.
when young life is simpler because the passions are not so strong. We see things more clearly. I knew when young that what the great teachers were asking, what God ultimately wants, is not the same as what desire wants. I knew one day i would have to make a choice between Girls and God. I put this off thinking I could do both. If I became perfect then I would have the perfect girl. Not so! A girl will ask of you things that your soul cannot give, and so we debase ourselves and enter the flesh market to win and lose, buy and sell our bodies. The choice is simple: we either escape the lure completely and be liberated, or we fall in completely and die like a bee into honey. Most lives are spent walking around the honey pot rim: Death sneaks up on us while we decide!
The alpha males: the George Bests, the Hugh Hefners attract the guts. These seem on the surface to be the direction that we seek. But on closer inspection are not these pale, plastic and vulnerable people? If you are a Demon isn't it incredible easy to test these people and win? Simply take away the women and what happens... we see it all the time... alcoholism and self destruction. The demons win every time.
No to be strong and noble we have to be a bit tougher. I'm confused however because on the one hand I wish to respect women like "my muse" but on the other hand I simply cannot respect what they look for in a man. The Aryan goal, the nobility, is to know oneself, to be true to oneself, to be at home with oneself. Such men as these become a girl's best friend. Men should chose to be a girl's friend then a true boy-"friend". This honestly seems to be the case. And in that case why not jiust be everyones friend and remove sex from the picture... and this is the monastic path... it seems the only goal.
So it follows that ultimately when sex has eventually lost its attraction in this life or the next, or the next, that we humans can arrive at a peaceful aretez in deep and honest friendship.
Such is the dream! Desire for sexual intimacy is a very great demon that causes very much pain, the battle that has claimed many a valiant hero, the battle field strewn with the bodies of young contenders, their souls screaming in anguish as their eyes and minds decieve them.
Its a medaeval reconstruction, and sorely out of favour in the liberal world of today, but as far as I can see today my soul tells me its the truth. Isn't it just easier to sell out and get a girl? Sadly not for me... I seek aretez... Roxanne puts a red light in the window for a very good reason!
Friday, 30 May 2008
On Love/Sex/Girls
Just caught an advert for a book on getting girls on Yahoo. Yup can't disagree with the advice on what works... but it raises two problems...
1) It seems that girls simply don't allow you to love them. Its truly a lot easier to get a girl when you simply don't care or only want careless sex, than to be involved in some existential struggle for identity and existence. This unfortunately is the fact, that girls are actually bad for progress!
2) And point one is brought out directly in what the man says. His motivation for working out how to get girls was firstly to get them and secondly to avoid the worrying thought that he might end up alone!
But why did he want them? He seems now to enjoy a string of "relationships" with what he considers beautiful and worthy girls citing "actresses" amongst his conquests.
Now within the domain of male folly this is completely a priori and understandable... find a man who doesn't appreciate the value of this. But, on second reflection it doesn't solve the problem... it simply avoids it.
The big problem which to this day, and maybe to my death I will never solve is this:
If you have ever "failed" in love then is it enough to simply love again? You see if it is, then you haven't failed! Why? because you let it go, tried again and eventually succeeded. If the love you finally got was a good as the love you lost, then you didn't lose!
This is the established wisdom which we are expected to learn, this is why we are able to get through life in general because we learn that if we don't get this, we will have that. In so doing we can live in the illusion that we never fail.
But deep down we know this is a lie. Yes we have "failed" (or are very likely to at some point in life) and that can never be undone.
Now I put "failed" in quotation marks because this is not about success/failure this is about existence/non-existence. If you have a child and it dies you don't just have another child and this is the replacement. The two children are still different and one has died and there is nothing that can be done to bring it back. This is the problem of identity and existence. You can't just forget about the identity of things in the mess of mass produced identical versions of some Platonic ideals. I want an iPhone - not "this" iPhone just "an" iPhone and any will do. Is this the same with friends/girlfriends/wifes/jobs/myself etc. Unfortunately just about every girl I ever met was more impressed with the idea of having a "man" or "getting married" than with what we actually had (which wasn't much I grant ;-)
So the problem. Once failed in something, it is dead and we can't bring it back.... this is an expensive blog just smashed a beaker in the lab.... that's it we will replace the beaker but this mornings work is gone forever...
So if we are going to allow things to go so easily and move on then we will never really have them when they do come. On the other hand if we hold on to thinsg identities then we have the chance to truly have them, but we also lose them forever when they go.
This is the little mermaid problem and I can see no way out.
1) It seems that girls simply don't allow you to love them. Its truly a lot easier to get a girl when you simply don't care or only want careless sex, than to be involved in some existential struggle for identity and existence. This unfortunately is the fact, that girls are actually bad for progress!
2) And point one is brought out directly in what the man says. His motivation for working out how to get girls was firstly to get them and secondly to avoid the worrying thought that he might end up alone!
But why did he want them? He seems now to enjoy a string of "relationships" with what he considers beautiful and worthy girls citing "actresses" amongst his conquests.
Now within the domain of male folly this is completely a priori and understandable... find a man who doesn't appreciate the value of this. But, on second reflection it doesn't solve the problem... it simply avoids it.
The big problem which to this day, and maybe to my death I will never solve is this:
If you have ever "failed" in love then is it enough to simply love again? You see if it is, then you haven't failed! Why? because you let it go, tried again and eventually succeeded. If the love you finally got was a good as the love you lost, then you didn't lose!
This is the established wisdom which we are expected to learn, this is why we are able to get through life in general because we learn that if we don't get this, we will have that. In so doing we can live in the illusion that we never fail.
But deep down we know this is a lie. Yes we have "failed" (or are very likely to at some point in life) and that can never be undone.
Now I put "failed" in quotation marks because this is not about success/failure this is about existence/non-existence. If you have a child and it dies you don't just have another child and this is the replacement. The two children are still different and one has died and there is nothing that can be done to bring it back. This is the problem of identity and existence. You can't just forget about the identity of things in the mess of mass produced identical versions of some Platonic ideals. I want an iPhone - not "this" iPhone just "an" iPhone and any will do. Is this the same with friends/girlfriends/wifes/jobs/myself etc. Unfortunately just about every girl I ever met was more impressed with the idea of having a "man" or "getting married" than with what we actually had (which wasn't much I grant ;-)
So the problem. Once failed in something, it is dead and we can't bring it back.... this is an expensive blog just smashed a beaker in the lab.... that's it we will replace the beaker but this mornings work is gone forever...
So if we are going to allow things to go so easily and move on then we will never really have them when they do come. On the other hand if we hold on to thinsg identities then we have the chance to truly have them, but we also lose them forever when they go.
This is the little mermaid problem and I can see no way out.
Monday, 26 May 2008
What is evil? What is goodness? What is life?
This is actually very simple... but a complete hash is made of it in modern culture and religion.
Firstly there is no such things as evil, in the same way there is no such thing as darkness. All there is in the latter case is a lack of light, and all there is in the former case is a lack of wisdom.
As argued in a recent post, the wise one treats his enemies with care whilst only the idiot antagonises them with threats of violence. If you threaten a good person with violence you are unlikely to get a favourable response, how much more likely then are you to make things worse if you threat a bad person like this! It's common sense but a mistake we all make.
So the 3 evils are identified in the East as anger, greed and ego. When I first heard this i thought i didn't really have any of these. Then I realised how angry I got; now I realise that I am often unhappy not with what I actually have, but rather with what I could have - this is greed - and of course we are all obsessed with ourselves. Everyone thinks that they are the most important person in the world. Even with family and friends its only because they are "our" family and friends that makes them important. Problem is we tend to justify our poisons and evils. We think they are normal and usual and we don't become aware of how damaging they are. Evil of course is the last thing we will see, this is the nature of evil: seductive, alluring, persuasive, blinding us to the light. This is why people do evil things, simply because they don't see them as evil. If they/we really knew they were evil we wouldn't do them. You think a murderer must be mad to do what they do, but then our soldiers are out there murdering and we think it is ok! Ask the murder I'm sure they think they are right to.
In Judeism we have 10 commandments. I'll just try and fit these into the schema of 3 evils above. That was the real point of this blog... just looking at wikipedia I see that actually there are 12 sentences that have been grouped into 10.
I am the Lord your God
You shall have no other gods before me
You shall not make for yourself an idol
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your God
Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy
Honor your father and mother
These 6 are ego. The point being that one should not put oneself above the creator who made even us, and to whome we owe everything including the power of our hands, and the world in which we live. We owe almost everything to our parents also and we are told to remember this lest we make that worst sin of thinking that we belong to ourselves.
You shall not murder
This is the poison of anger and hatred.
You shall not commit adultery
You shall not steal
These 2 are greed, basically not appreciating what we have and taking what is not our.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor
If one lies it might be with the intention of harming someone, in which case it is anger and hatred. If however we lie to get something that we desire then it is greed.
You shall not covet your neighbor's house
You shall not covet your neighbor's wife
These two are greed again.
Another point of confusion that is made very clear is Eastern writing, but less so in Western writings is the source of evil. My grandfather used to say that "it is not what you do but the reason why you do it". This is almost correct. More importantly it is your "motive" in doing it. What exactly drove you to do it. We call all decide to do things and then make up a good reason for it. The point is what initiated this process in our minds. It is this inception point, which requires great honest from us, which is what brings either the praise or the wrath of God (or the causation of karma).
IF someone says something to me and I am caused anger by what they say, I might bite my tongue and think hard why they are wrong in saying this. Then I might be unco-operative with them afterwards, or use an opportunity to argue that they are wrong, or try and prove that I am right. In all these cases no matter how right I am and unjustified they are, the problem is that I am being motivated by anger. This is always wrong, and can only make my own life miserable, make the current situation un pleasant and set up wrath from God in the future. Moments of anger will lead to an ugly future of hostility, difficulty, ugliness and eventually even mental illness.
Likewise if I dump my girlfriend because I have seen a beautiful girl in the night club actually this is greed, maybe also elements of anger. Following this logic we will be always be walking a treadmill because there will always be attractive things waiting to be got forever. This is the sadness of greed.
If we consider ourselves more important than others - which is manifest in both greed and anger where we think that we are the only ones who deserve things or have been hurt - then we will find ourselves becoming more and more isolated. Friendships and relationships will be shallow and uncaring, and the world around will become unharmonious and distant.
These are the punishments that arise from poisons, either by God or Karma depending upon which words you are accustomed to (the logos is the same either way). The wise and good understand this and seek to tame these poisons. The foolish and evil give into these poisons and mount of endless sufferings in the future.
The only difference between a saint and sinner is that the saint never gives up trying. We are all in this, we all have our poisons, and we are all weak in the face of them. Given this it seems right to help one another out in mastering poisons, but it is very hard to inform someone of their own poisons because they really will think they don't have them as indeed I have done. I know inside I have these very severely, and I am becoming more aware of them as I tackle them. This is a good sign and means very gradually (20 years) I'm winning the struggle.
Anyone who doubts this logic should simply watch the way of things. Find the evil darkness inside themselves (the anger, greed or ego) and let it flourish and see if it creates suffering or peace and happiness. On the other hand they can look for some light; some sentiments of care, joy, love or equality between people for these are the 4 lights. Stand under these and ask is this where you truely wish to be? Hard to do when we are poisoned and hurting inside, but if we are caring to ourselves is this not where we want to be? If so then we should work to spread the light inside and outside. A lifetimes work, but the only path to a good future.
Firstly there is no such things as evil, in the same way there is no such thing as darkness. All there is in the latter case is a lack of light, and all there is in the former case is a lack of wisdom.
As argued in a recent post, the wise one treats his enemies with care whilst only the idiot antagonises them with threats of violence. If you threaten a good person with violence you are unlikely to get a favourable response, how much more likely then are you to make things worse if you threat a bad person like this! It's common sense but a mistake we all make.
So the 3 evils are identified in the East as anger, greed and ego. When I first heard this i thought i didn't really have any of these. Then I realised how angry I got; now I realise that I am often unhappy not with what I actually have, but rather with what I could have - this is greed - and of course we are all obsessed with ourselves. Everyone thinks that they are the most important person in the world. Even with family and friends its only because they are "our" family and friends that makes them important. Problem is we tend to justify our poisons and evils. We think they are normal and usual and we don't become aware of how damaging they are. Evil of course is the last thing we will see, this is the nature of evil: seductive, alluring, persuasive, blinding us to the light. This is why people do evil things, simply because they don't see them as evil. If they/we really knew they were evil we wouldn't do them. You think a murderer must be mad to do what they do, but then our soldiers are out there murdering and we think it is ok! Ask the murder I'm sure they think they are right to.
In Judeism we have 10 commandments. I'll just try and fit these into the schema of 3 evils above. That was the real point of this blog... just looking at wikipedia I see that actually there are 12 sentences that have been grouped into 10.
I am the Lord your God
You shall have no other gods before me
You shall not make for yourself an idol
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your God
Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy
Honor your father and mother
These 6 are ego. The point being that one should not put oneself above the creator who made even us, and to whome we owe everything including the power of our hands, and the world in which we live. We owe almost everything to our parents also and we are told to remember this lest we make that worst sin of thinking that we belong to ourselves.
You shall not murder
This is the poison of anger and hatred.
You shall not commit adultery
You shall not steal
These 2 are greed, basically not appreciating what we have and taking what is not our.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor
If one lies it might be with the intention of harming someone, in which case it is anger and hatred. If however we lie to get something that we desire then it is greed.
You shall not covet your neighbor's house
You shall not covet your neighbor's wife
These two are greed again.
Another point of confusion that is made very clear is Eastern writing, but less so in Western writings is the source of evil. My grandfather used to say that "it is not what you do but the reason why you do it". This is almost correct. More importantly it is your "motive" in doing it. What exactly drove you to do it. We call all decide to do things and then make up a good reason for it. The point is what initiated this process in our minds. It is this inception point, which requires great honest from us, which is what brings either the praise or the wrath of God (or the causation of karma).
IF someone says something to me and I am caused anger by what they say, I might bite my tongue and think hard why they are wrong in saying this. Then I might be unco-operative with them afterwards, or use an opportunity to argue that they are wrong, or try and prove that I am right. In all these cases no matter how right I am and unjustified they are, the problem is that I am being motivated by anger. This is always wrong, and can only make my own life miserable, make the current situation un pleasant and set up wrath from God in the future. Moments of anger will lead to an ugly future of hostility, difficulty, ugliness and eventually even mental illness.
Likewise if I dump my girlfriend because I have seen a beautiful girl in the night club actually this is greed, maybe also elements of anger. Following this logic we will be always be walking a treadmill because there will always be attractive things waiting to be got forever. This is the sadness of greed.
If we consider ourselves more important than others - which is manifest in both greed and anger where we think that we are the only ones who deserve things or have been hurt - then we will find ourselves becoming more and more isolated. Friendships and relationships will be shallow and uncaring, and the world around will become unharmonious and distant.
These are the punishments that arise from poisons, either by God or Karma depending upon which words you are accustomed to (the logos is the same either way). The wise and good understand this and seek to tame these poisons. The foolish and evil give into these poisons and mount of endless sufferings in the future.
The only difference between a saint and sinner is that the saint never gives up trying. We are all in this, we all have our poisons, and we are all weak in the face of them. Given this it seems right to help one another out in mastering poisons, but it is very hard to inform someone of their own poisons because they really will think they don't have them as indeed I have done. I know inside I have these very severely, and I am becoming more aware of them as I tackle them. This is a good sign and means very gradually (20 years) I'm winning the struggle.
Anyone who doubts this logic should simply watch the way of things. Find the evil darkness inside themselves (the anger, greed or ego) and let it flourish and see if it creates suffering or peace and happiness. On the other hand they can look for some light; some sentiments of care, joy, love or equality between people for these are the 4 lights. Stand under these and ask is this where you truely wish to be? Hard to do when we are poisoned and hurting inside, but if we are caring to ourselves is this not where we want to be? If so then we should work to spread the light inside and outside. A lifetimes work, but the only path to a good future.
Friday, 23 May 2008
Relativity, Motion and Stillness (important post)
Argued the first part before...
The earth goes round the sun? Not last time I looked. This morning it was on the horizon, its high in the sky at the moment and later it will be on the other horizon. I'd have said it definitely just went around me and the earth. Not disputable!! the evidence is there every day for us all to see.
This is the power of illusions again. We are "told" to think that the earth goes around the sun, and therefore we don;t even see what is before our very eyes.
It is true however this if you went up in a space craft and took up an position in "space" stationary with respect to the sun then you would see the earth orbiting the sun. We tend to think of the sun as stationary in space in the Copernican model.
But can we really take up such a "stationary" place in space anyway given that the Sun itself is orbiting a galactic centre...
Its all about where you stand. And, the implication here is that without knowing where to stand you can't say whether something is true or not. And, if you are told something that is true but seems false then you know you are not standing in the right place.
Now this seems to be the import of a lot of religious teaching. It is not so much that the teaching is right absolutely, as saying to us that to enlighten we need to find a place to stand where such teaching appears to be true. Such a "place to stand" is very sophisticated in religious thought.
A friend once said very wisely that his understanding of the buddhist teaching that the "only certainty is change" (from the Japanese Monkey-King stories we were watching) is that for everything to be change, we ourselves must be stationary! If we are moving with something else then it seems to be stationary like two cars side by side on the motor-way. When you stop suddenly you notice how fast it is going (ok, not so in relativity theory, but metaphorically it works here). Likewise when we take up a position of true stillness then everything seems to be in motion. Ironically those who do not understand this seek peace by trying to move with the moving things to create an illusion of being stationary and there is the cause of suffering and rebirth!
Listening to Prabhupada on you-tube (a gem amongst the shit that goes down the U-tube - get it hehe) he provides an insight into reincarnation. That if you move from one place to another, yes your body has moved but have "you"? Adding the above insight: if you had moved as well, then would you notice the change? It is because we don't move that our bodies can move. Likewise in reverse the teaching of Hui-Neng that it is not the flag which moves but our minds (if you are familiar with the story). And, also Hui-Neng that because our minds (true selves) are "empty" that we can let the world in to be-there (Da-sein in German and Heideggar).
This is also like an insight I gained on a mountain. The more work i put into climbing this mountain the less I could see of the mountain and ironically the more I could see of the mountains around. Being somewhere affords us knowledge of everywhere else! Every statement is made from somewhere about somewhere else.
Thus there is an irony at the core of human existence. Whatever phenomena arise, they can do so because we are not part of that phenomenon, and so relatively there appears to be change. Not understanding this irony we are constantly in motion seeking to be with the phenomena, and so always changing our place of standing - which causes an endless motion and a corresponding endless change of phenomena.
The earth goes round the sun? Not last time I looked. This morning it was on the horizon, its high in the sky at the moment and later it will be on the other horizon. I'd have said it definitely just went around me and the earth. Not disputable!! the evidence is there every day for us all to see.
This is the power of illusions again. We are "told" to think that the earth goes around the sun, and therefore we don;t even see what is before our very eyes.
It is true however this if you went up in a space craft and took up an position in "space" stationary with respect to the sun then you would see the earth orbiting the sun. We tend to think of the sun as stationary in space in the Copernican model.
But can we really take up such a "stationary" place in space anyway given that the Sun itself is orbiting a galactic centre...
Its all about where you stand. And, the implication here is that without knowing where to stand you can't say whether something is true or not. And, if you are told something that is true but seems false then you know you are not standing in the right place.
Now this seems to be the import of a lot of religious teaching. It is not so much that the teaching is right absolutely, as saying to us that to enlighten we need to find a place to stand where such teaching appears to be true. Such a "place to stand" is very sophisticated in religious thought.
A friend once said very wisely that his understanding of the buddhist teaching that the "only certainty is change" (from the Japanese Monkey-King stories we were watching) is that for everything to be change, we ourselves must be stationary! If we are moving with something else then it seems to be stationary like two cars side by side on the motor-way. When you stop suddenly you notice how fast it is going (ok, not so in relativity theory, but metaphorically it works here). Likewise when we take up a position of true stillness then everything seems to be in motion. Ironically those who do not understand this seek peace by trying to move with the moving things to create an illusion of being stationary and there is the cause of suffering and rebirth!
Listening to Prabhupada on you-tube (a gem amongst the shit that goes down the U-tube - get it hehe) he provides an insight into reincarnation. That if you move from one place to another, yes your body has moved but have "you"? Adding the above insight: if you had moved as well, then would you notice the change? It is because we don't move that our bodies can move. Likewise in reverse the teaching of Hui-Neng that it is not the flag which moves but our minds (if you are familiar with the story). And, also Hui-Neng that because our minds (true selves) are "empty" that we can let the world in to be-there (Da-sein in German and Heideggar).
This is also like an insight I gained on a mountain. The more work i put into climbing this mountain the less I could see of the mountain and ironically the more I could see of the mountains around. Being somewhere affords us knowledge of everywhere else! Every statement is made from somewhere about somewhere else.
Thus there is an irony at the core of human existence. Whatever phenomena arise, they can do so because we are not part of that phenomenon, and so relatively there appears to be change. Not understanding this irony we are constantly in motion seeking to be with the phenomena, and so always changing our place of standing - which causes an endless motion and a corresponding endless change of phenomena.
So I was asked what's wrong with the world...
ya a friend asked me my opinion and I was supprised to find myself answering like I would have 10 years ago based on the Frankfurt school diagnosis of capitalism... but what was odd is that I felt a return to myself and a reconnection with humanity and the world...
now was that because what I am about to say is true, or because I have been repressing the side of myself which agrees with this? That is for the reader to decide...
The problem is to do with "Value" (very Robert Pirsig - 'Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance').
We do not question the notion of inherent value normally. An apple is an apple, and it is "good" to eat. A friend is valuable, a person in their own right, intrinsically valuable. Indeed harder to see, but so is everyone.
However in Capitalism value is decided differently, it is a democratic result of supply and demand. High demand for a scarce in a population leads to a high value, and vice-versa is also true.
Now there are exceptions to this in luxury goods which proves my point. When Bells and Teachers whiskey were in tight competition I heard that Bells finally got some uniqueness by raising its price, thereby giving it the feeling of a more superior drink. This is the problem with capitalism - the price alone has begun to value things.
A good deal is where we get something that is valuable, for a sum of money that we consider to be less valuable. Where money is determined by how hard we need to work to get hold of it. With money printing presses, lotteries, bank interest, rents, globalised export of difficult labours, machines and a host of "easy" monies the value of money is degraded and so everything looks like good value.... in theory...
Problem Capitalism thinks only in terms of money. Companies win or die based upon cash flows. Bosses and investors are concerned with financial return on investmenst not on what the company actually does for the world.
Productivity in a world governed by capitalists is determined by financial products, not by actual "goods" generated for sale.
As a result industry is stripped down to generate cheap goods (bads?) as efficiently as possible with the highest profit margins.
I always considered this short sighted because money is only useful when you buy something with it, and when everything you buy is "bads" then you devalue your own holdings.
However money does something else, it buys people, and holds together a structure of power. Capitalists become rich not so that they can buy more, but to earn them a stake in a system of power that is structured upon money.
Thus there is no respect for the product, and therefore no respect for value. In the days when money and power were separate this problem did not exist. Power was gained by blood right and from the Monarch. They had a small army, lived in a castle and took taxes from the land around them. If you argued they emprisoned you. That was power. Money was gained in gold from work, craft, skill and trade.
Today if you are rich, you are powerful. Thus money has become power itself, and its role as a measurer of exchange value has been lost.
In this way money has become power, and so power is confused with value also. I have written at length the illusion of it all. When on a desert island try and eat your money or your power!
In making this criticism I found my heart again, because things and mankind cannot be viewed through monetary transactions. People are valuable whether they are unemployed and poor, or employed and rich or any combination of these. Money simply does not enter into the pciture at all. A good, well made product is just this even if a buyer cannot be found. A writer of books and music doesn't aim for an audience as much as satisfy their own instinct for quality.
One would hope that an audience had a taste for quality, that a million pound advertising campaign would not sway the voter or the purchaser, that people would act only upon what is valuable and not valuable and let money and coersion have not a part to play.
I do not write what I write here "for" an audience! What an absurd thought. Of course it must have an audience - I assume I'm not the only one who writes and reads - but I don't write it solely "for" the reader. It is written because it seeks to be written, because it has value of its own, because it wishes to exist.
I don't expect the truth of this to depend upon a democratic vote (either a poll or upon sales). If there is value to what is written here it should speak in its own terms, not be translated into power or money or accolade. An here the ouroboros stirs in his lair beneath the sea.
And so this true for all things, especially people. But the kids today find it hard to find a place in
this world - requiring the respect of fellow peers, the respect of the academic institutions, th respect of their parents, the respect of the authorities and the law : all these things before they can exist. And worse the respect of themselves. How is this to be measured in a world of possession, money and establishment structures!
Little chance of an apple even being an apple in todays world! Imagine the paperwork required to pass an apple as a true apple. The quality control, the standards, the institutes and government legislations, the copyrights, the stamps of approval, the industry to generate a supply of bona-fide "approved" apples. Time was when it was just an apple!
What chance then for the people of this world! And we wonder why there are problems in our "societies" (which don't exist anyway).
now was that because what I am about to say is true, or because I have been repressing the side of myself which agrees with this? That is for the reader to decide...
The problem is to do with "Value" (very Robert Pirsig - 'Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance').
We do not question the notion of inherent value normally. An apple is an apple, and it is "good" to eat. A friend is valuable, a person in their own right, intrinsically valuable. Indeed harder to see, but so is everyone.
However in Capitalism value is decided differently, it is a democratic result of supply and demand. High demand for a scarce in a population leads to a high value, and vice-versa is also true.
Now there are exceptions to this in luxury goods which proves my point. When Bells and Teachers whiskey were in tight competition I heard that Bells finally got some uniqueness by raising its price, thereby giving it the feeling of a more superior drink. This is the problem with capitalism - the price alone has begun to value things.
A good deal is where we get something that is valuable, for a sum of money that we consider to be less valuable. Where money is determined by how hard we need to work to get hold of it. With money printing presses, lotteries, bank interest, rents, globalised export of difficult labours, machines and a host of "easy" monies the value of money is degraded and so everything looks like good value.... in theory...
Problem Capitalism thinks only in terms of money. Companies win or die based upon cash flows. Bosses and investors are concerned with financial return on investmenst not on what the company actually does for the world.
Productivity in a world governed by capitalists is determined by financial products, not by actual "goods" generated for sale.
As a result industry is stripped down to generate cheap goods (bads?) as efficiently as possible with the highest profit margins.
I always considered this short sighted because money is only useful when you buy something with it, and when everything you buy is "bads" then you devalue your own holdings.
However money does something else, it buys people, and holds together a structure of power. Capitalists become rich not so that they can buy more, but to earn them a stake in a system of power that is structured upon money.
Thus there is no respect for the product, and therefore no respect for value. In the days when money and power were separate this problem did not exist. Power was gained by blood right and from the Monarch. They had a small army, lived in a castle and took taxes from the land around them. If you argued they emprisoned you. That was power. Money was gained in gold from work, craft, skill and trade.
Today if you are rich, you are powerful. Thus money has become power itself, and its role as a measurer of exchange value has been lost.
In this way money has become power, and so power is confused with value also. I have written at length the illusion of it all. When on a desert island try and eat your money or your power!
In making this criticism I found my heart again, because things and mankind cannot be viewed through monetary transactions. People are valuable whether they are unemployed and poor, or employed and rich or any combination of these. Money simply does not enter into the pciture at all. A good, well made product is just this even if a buyer cannot be found. A writer of books and music doesn't aim for an audience as much as satisfy their own instinct for quality.
One would hope that an audience had a taste for quality, that a million pound advertising campaign would not sway the voter or the purchaser, that people would act only upon what is valuable and not valuable and let money and coersion have not a part to play.
I do not write what I write here "for" an audience! What an absurd thought. Of course it must have an audience - I assume I'm not the only one who writes and reads - but I don't write it solely "for" the reader. It is written because it seeks to be written, because it has value of its own, because it wishes to exist.
I don't expect the truth of this to depend upon a democratic vote (either a poll or upon sales). If there is value to what is written here it should speak in its own terms, not be translated into power or money or accolade. An here the ouroboros stirs in his lair beneath the sea.
And so this true for all things, especially people. But the kids today find it hard to find a place in
this world - requiring the respect of fellow peers, the respect of the academic institutions, th respect of their parents, the respect of the authorities and the law : all these things before they can exist. And worse the respect of themselves. How is this to be measured in a world of possession, money and establishment structures!
Little chance of an apple even being an apple in todays world! Imagine the paperwork required to pass an apple as a true apple. The quality control, the standards, the institutes and government legislations, the copyrights, the stamps of approval, the industry to generate a supply of bona-fide "approved" apples. Time was when it was just an apple!
What chance then for the people of this world! And we wonder why there are problems in our "societies" (which don't exist anyway).
Monday, 19 May 2008
Never contradict these rules...Definition of goodness!
I'm beginning to tackle much more risky demons now where I know that negative energies can arouse passions and wrong-thoughts. This is like Descartes before his meditations: the rules are as taught by Buddha:
(1) Do NO evil ever.
(2) Actions arising from sense gratification always lead to greatly unpleasant consequences regardless how pleasant the invitation in the short term.
(3) Actions arising from the wish for the welfare of others are lead eventually to the greatest pleasures.
(4) Anger, Greed and Selfishness always lead to bad consequences, NEVER good.
Remember these, believe nothing else, and act with these in mind and things can't go far wrong :-)
An example:
A mistaken belief I often have is that if this person is a w****r then I have the right to be angry and treat them badly. A good example is my boss who behaves like a child, is never wrong despite being incompetent and makes life impossible for everyone at work. So I feel justified in being angry at him and making his life difficult.
But wait. If I am a good person and I can't put up with him being a w****r then what chance has he got of putting up with me if I'm a w****r!!
Likewise someone gets angry at you and you don't like it so you fight back. Well if you can't put up with them being angry, then what chance is there of them tolerating you being angry.
Any such argument based upon the "well they are like X so I will be like X" is doomed to failure.
Indeed the opposite argument is the only one that works.
"They are like X. I think X is a bad way to be, so I will not be like X".
So if someone punches you, the correct response should be to realise how much you didn't like that and make sure you never do that to anyone yourself!
That is already 50% of the worlds problems solved.
The other half of the problem is being aware of what we do to others. Often other people suffer in silence and we never realise what we are doing. This is more subtle. By promoting communication and listening to others we will get an idea of this. So always listen to peoples criticisms and attitudes to you : no smoke without fire. But at the same time treat what you hear wisely because it is someones attitude to you and is based upon their own needs.
If someone hates you because you always park in their space, and you know that it isn't really "their" parking space but a public parking space which they have gotten used to using ... then obviously their hatred is based upon their own need for a parking space.
If you were in their situation you would need to find another space. So I suppose you could help them find another space, or discuss it, or come to an agreement that you share the space. The root problem here is their own selfishness and it is a good situation to illustrate to us how bad our own selfishness would be!
A bit of thought and dispassionate "even" balanced thinking will solve most problems. I consider Tibet a lot. Even despite the most even approach from the Dalai Lama the wishes of his people are no nearer being met. So what is the even solution... well I suppose it is to become Chinese! Its just a name afterall. More practically the Communist system however will transfrom the religious practices of the Tibetans and that is the problem: not the national/ratial argument but the ideological argument. There are idelogical arguments the world over : and the Chinese have suffered from the ideology of their own government every bit as much as the Tibetans. That is why they fled to Taiwan. So the obvious way forward is to accept Beijing rule and Chinese authority like a cup accepts water, and then seek to transform China because you are China, just as the Chinese themselves are. Would a person by any other name still want to same things?
(1) Do NO evil ever.
(2) Actions arising from sense gratification always lead to greatly unpleasant consequences regardless how pleasant the invitation in the short term.
(3) Actions arising from the wish for the welfare of others are lead eventually to the greatest pleasures.
(4) Anger, Greed and Selfishness always lead to bad consequences, NEVER good.
Remember these, believe nothing else, and act with these in mind and things can't go far wrong :-)
An example:
A mistaken belief I often have is that if this person is a w****r then I have the right to be angry and treat them badly. A good example is my boss who behaves like a child, is never wrong despite being incompetent and makes life impossible for everyone at work. So I feel justified in being angry at him and making his life difficult.
But wait. If I am a good person and I can't put up with him being a w****r then what chance has he got of putting up with me if I'm a w****r!!
Likewise someone gets angry at you and you don't like it so you fight back. Well if you can't put up with them being angry, then what chance is there of them tolerating you being angry.
Any such argument based upon the "well they are like X so I will be like X" is doomed to failure.
Indeed the opposite argument is the only one that works.
"They are like X. I think X is a bad way to be, so I will not be like X".
So if someone punches you, the correct response should be to realise how much you didn't like that and make sure you never do that to anyone yourself!
That is already 50% of the worlds problems solved.
The other half of the problem is being aware of what we do to others. Often other people suffer in silence and we never realise what we are doing. This is more subtle. By promoting communication and listening to others we will get an idea of this. So always listen to peoples criticisms and attitudes to you : no smoke without fire. But at the same time treat what you hear wisely because it is someones attitude to you and is based upon their own needs.
If someone hates you because you always park in their space, and you know that it isn't really "their" parking space but a public parking space which they have gotten used to using ... then obviously their hatred is based upon their own need for a parking space.
If you were in their situation you would need to find another space. So I suppose you could help them find another space, or discuss it, or come to an agreement that you share the space. The root problem here is their own selfishness and it is a good situation to illustrate to us how bad our own selfishness would be!
A bit of thought and dispassionate "even" balanced thinking will solve most problems. I consider Tibet a lot. Even despite the most even approach from the Dalai Lama the wishes of his people are no nearer being met. So what is the even solution... well I suppose it is to become Chinese! Its just a name afterall. More practically the Communist system however will transfrom the religious practices of the Tibetans and that is the problem: not the national/ratial argument but the ideological argument. There are idelogical arguments the world over : and the Chinese have suffered from the ideology of their own government every bit as much as the Tibetans. That is why they fled to Taiwan. So the obvious way forward is to accept Beijing rule and Chinese authority like a cup accepts water, and then seek to transform China because you are China, just as the Chinese themselves are. Would a person by any other name still want to same things?
Sunday, 18 May 2008
The poverty of being inside riches
Dunno if I mentioned this... an experience I had while walking to John o'Groats... I had taken the coastal path around a bay until I came to wall and a dead end. A style over the wall took me into the wonderful grounds of a mansion with graveled paths tracing their way through endless flowerbeds and topiary. I knew i should not be there, but there was no other way and I simply walked through the garden. I had walked 800miles a short stretch of a kilometer through these grounds was meaningless to me. Having slept rough for weeks, the opulence and grandeur of this place was breathtaking, thoughts entered my mind of relaxing in chairs, sleeping in soft beds, running water, food... it was a paradise.
Eventually I met the owner driving down his drive in a Bentley. "Can I help you?", he politely, but sarcastically, asked. I explained my situation and it seemed i was not the first. He nodded the way up the drive and I made my way onto the main road and continued on my way.
An hour later I was at the crest of the hill that had bounded the northern horizon. I looked back over the mornings walking and far in the distance now was a small square of green. The high fir trees, the topiary and the huge mansion now just a spec in the vast plain between the horizons.
Suddenly and unexpectedly I felt like I the one who was rich. While within the confines of that paradise it had seemed like unimaginable wealth. But now looking at it, in its place in the world, it suddenly seemed so small and insignificant, not much richness at all, and instead the unimaginable vastness of the world seemed the valuable thing. In almost a thousand miles walking I had opened my eyes to the other side of the picture - not the small contents of the boxes in which we live, but the opposite: the vast space that exists outside those boxes. Hording our possesions, heaping up our wealth only makes sense inside the box. This box is bigger than that box, this safe is bigger than that safe. But looked at from the outside, they are all small.
So I hope I might one day have walked a thousand miles amongst people, and seen that really I am small, and what I hord and appreciate about myself when I compare myself to others, is really negligable when compared with the huge space outside myself, which I only recognise when I manage to grow into it - if if I were expanding my borders - but should try to recognise directly. When I am very, very small this place is huge!
Eventually I met the owner driving down his drive in a Bentley. "Can I help you?", he politely, but sarcastically, asked. I explained my situation and it seemed i was not the first. He nodded the way up the drive and I made my way onto the main road and continued on my way.
An hour later I was at the crest of the hill that had bounded the northern horizon. I looked back over the mornings walking and far in the distance now was a small square of green. The high fir trees, the topiary and the huge mansion now just a spec in the vast plain between the horizons.
Suddenly and unexpectedly I felt like I the one who was rich. While within the confines of that paradise it had seemed like unimaginable wealth. But now looking at it, in its place in the world, it suddenly seemed so small and insignificant, not much richness at all, and instead the unimaginable vastness of the world seemed the valuable thing. In almost a thousand miles walking I had opened my eyes to the other side of the picture - not the small contents of the boxes in which we live, but the opposite: the vast space that exists outside those boxes. Hording our possesions, heaping up our wealth only makes sense inside the box. This box is bigger than that box, this safe is bigger than that safe. But looked at from the outside, they are all small.
So I hope I might one day have walked a thousand miles amongst people, and seen that really I am small, and what I hord and appreciate about myself when I compare myself to others, is really negligable when compared with the huge space outside myself, which I only recognise when I manage to grow into it - if if I were expanding my borders - but should try to recognise directly. When I am very, very small this place is huge!
Friday, 16 May 2008
Great work by Greenpeace
Sanctioned illegal selling of whale meat from Japanese fleet
Hopefully this will damage the reputation of Japanese whaling forever!
Hopefully this will damage the reputation of Japanese whaling forever!
25-30% of global wildlife lost in my lifetime :-(
Well it shouldn't be a surprise, but its not a happy one
Wildlife populations 'plummeting'
Between a quarter and a third of the world's wildlife has been lost since 1970, according to data compiled by the Zoological Society of London. :-(
Based on the Living Planet Index
That's what annoys me about the global warming debate is that it's not the real issue its just been made a deal out of because it is impossible to prove. A great way to divert attention from teh real issues.
Wildlife populations 'plummeting'
Between a quarter and a third of the world's wildlife has been lost since 1970, according to data compiled by the Zoological Society of London. :-(
Based on the Living Planet Index
That's what annoys me about the global warming debate is that it's not the real issue its just been made a deal out of because it is impossible to prove. A great way to divert attention from teh real issues.
Thursday, 15 May 2008
Little Stanza 4 the day
Without work I was born,
Still, unemployed, I will die
And in between I did some things
And out betrixt out some things did me.
Still, unemployed, I will die
And in between I did some things
And out betrixt out some things did me.
Wednesday, 14 May 2008
Phantom money
Suppose that the total sum of transaction at any one time was £M. This would be the money supply of £. If there were 10 houses being bought in this period they would cost £M/10 each. This is the true value of the house.
Now if the rich legalise usury and fractional reserve banking where loans are not backed by anything then the £M is not used to pay for things directly but rather to pay back interest. Then prices become a hypothetical projection based upon the money flow and the interest rate - they are no longer real.
In our micro economy. If people pay an interest rate of r, and pay off in so t cycles then the theoretical value of houses increases by:
inc. = ( r^t-1 ) / ( r-1 )
In other words much larger house prices can be afforded because only the interest adds up to M.
So at an interest rate of 1.02% for 10 cycles makes each house appear to be 11 times more expensive, and at 1.04% annual rate for 25 years make houses appear 42 times more expensive while the real value is still £M/10. The apparent value is simply an illusion created by the demon parasites that run the monetary system!
So in our micro system, houses worth £175,000 with 25year payment and 1.04% interest are really worth £4,000! Times 10 to be safe and you have the £40,000 figure from the previous but one post.
So the laws of economics remind us to avoid gaining interest on our loans as well as using loans! We are the losers otherwise! Greed never pays!
Here's an option.
Interest free Banking!!!!... I should read this and take action...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAK_members_bank
p.s. Keynes who is coming under increasing attack because while rescuing the Americans from the 1930's recession has caused the current one is profoundly wrong as Howard Katz first alerted me. The Keynesian idea is that lowering interest rates creates freer money and stimulates spending which stimulates the economy. Previous logic was that increasing interest rates increased savings which gave the banks more to lend. Now that banks can lend whatever they want without limit the latter is irrelevant, and the forner logic has been taken to extremes. Spending has been stimulated artificially, "wealth" has been generated artificially (as demonstrated above) and the real economy is progressively ignored... until people wake up and they realise it was all a pointless dream.
btw Calculate the above for usury from well behaved banks... where the above is for banks with a fractional reserve of 0%.
Now if the rich legalise usury and fractional reserve banking where loans are not backed by anything then the £M is not used to pay for things directly but rather to pay back interest. Then prices become a hypothetical projection based upon the money flow and the interest rate - they are no longer real.
In our micro economy. If people pay an interest rate of r, and pay off in so t cycles then the theoretical value of houses increases by:
inc. = ( r^t-1 ) / ( r-1 )
In other words much larger house prices can be afforded because only the interest adds up to M.
So at an interest rate of 1.02% for 10 cycles makes each house appear to be 11 times more expensive, and at 1.04% annual rate for 25 years make houses appear 42 times more expensive while the real value is still £M/10. The apparent value is simply an illusion created by the demon parasites that run the monetary system!
So in our micro system, houses worth £175,000 with 25year payment and 1.04% interest are really worth £4,000! Times 10 to be safe and you have the £40,000 figure from the previous but one post.
So the laws of economics remind us to avoid gaining interest on our loans as well as using loans! We are the losers otherwise! Greed never pays!
Here's an option.
Interest free Banking!!!!... I should read this and take action...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAK_members_bank
p.s. Keynes who is coming under increasing attack because while rescuing the Americans from the 1930's recession has caused the current one is profoundly wrong as Howard Katz first alerted me. The Keynesian idea is that lowering interest rates creates freer money and stimulates spending which stimulates the economy. Previous logic was that increasing interest rates increased savings which gave the banks more to lend. Now that banks can lend whatever they want without limit the latter is irrelevant, and the forner logic has been taken to extremes. Spending has been stimulated artificially, "wealth" has been generated artificially (as demonstrated above) and the real economy is progressively ignored... until people wake up and they realise it was all a pointless dream.
btw Calculate the above for usury from well behaved banks... where the above is for banks with a fractional reserve of 0%.
5th Law of Economics
Ah missed one...
5. It is not what you get, but where the money goes that is most important.
Consider buying something from the manufacturer and buying it from a thief. You get the same thing but the money goes in very different directions. Give it to the maker and it goes to support the company who will make more of what you evidently wanted. Give it to the thief and it encourages him to thieve... and when your item is stolen you know why! I make this mistake all the time with bicycles.
While renting i realised that my landlord was a business man, not interested in supplying a service only interested in profit. It is expensive to rent and you get very little for your money. Where does the money from rent go? In this case it went to buy more houses and to fund his flamboyant life style. Basically it created nothing and achieved nothing in the greater world. It was badly spent money.
So I hatched the garage plan. All the money that would have been ploughed into the useless housing market bubble, is now given to the council in rent (and the council does good things with it) and I have large amounts to give to charity and save to buy a house in cash. This is an ethical and good way of life, in accordance with the 5 laws of economics propounded.
It is not that the current economic down turn is bad... it is simply the result of the current foolish laws of economics, designed to make some people rich and the most poor, and designed to keep a few people powerful and the majority impotent. Very pleased that Totnes and now Lewis (in UK) have issued their own money :-) I wish we could all do that.
5. It is not what you get, but where the money goes that is most important.
Consider buying something from the manufacturer and buying it from a thief. You get the same thing but the money goes in very different directions. Give it to the maker and it goes to support the company who will make more of what you evidently wanted. Give it to the thief and it encourages him to thieve... and when your item is stolen you know why! I make this mistake all the time with bicycles.
While renting i realised that my landlord was a business man, not interested in supplying a service only interested in profit. It is expensive to rent and you get very little for your money. Where does the money from rent go? In this case it went to buy more houses and to fund his flamboyant life style. Basically it created nothing and achieved nothing in the greater world. It was badly spent money.
So I hatched the garage plan. All the money that would have been ploughed into the useless housing market bubble, is now given to the council in rent (and the council does good things with it) and I have large amounts to give to charity and save to buy a house in cash. This is an ethical and good way of life, in accordance with the 5 laws of economics propounded.
It is not that the current economic down turn is bad... it is simply the result of the current foolish laws of economics, designed to make some people rich and the most poor, and designed to keep a few people powerful and the majority impotent. Very pleased that Totnes and now Lewis (in UK) have issued their own money :-) I wish we could all do that.
Tuesday, 13 May 2008
Why Credit is evil. My 4 laws of economics
btw there is more to why I live in a garage.
I have had a principle all my life which is "don't spend what you don't have." Taught me by my mother, which my father didn't follow sadly (it killed him).
Its more than a principle really, it is reality. You can't give what you don't have! If I don't have an apple then I can't give you an apple. If I sell the apple for money, then I can give you money; but if I don't have an apple then I can't sell it and I can't give you any money. There is no such thing as bank loan! (banks don't keep any apples - if you follow the analogy)
Now if I give you an apple, it is probably as a friend and I won't expect it back (this is the Godly way), but might expect you to be more generous with your things in future. So that if at some later stage you refused to let me borrow a pen I might begin to question whether I give you anything else in the future (but I won't hold that against you - just learn what you are like). Once given it is a gift, and that is the end of the transaction.
The rule here is never give anything that you expect back! because you will (quite probably) never see it again! People who abuse our generosity lose our friendship (which since we are generous people - makes it their severe loss to them), but always remain generous with what we can afford to lose!
Now someone may lure us into giving them the apple with a promise of 2 apples in return! Idiots. We aren't expecting even 1 apple back, let alone 2!! If we give them the apple it is because we can "afford to lose it", even if they promise us the moon, they can't get what we can't afford (banks break this rule every day).
In reverse someone may try to give us an apple on the agreement that we give them 2 apples in return. Then it must be assumed we will have two apples in the future to give them, so why not just wait for those 2 apples instead of take the 1 now?
If we are starving and we will die before we get an apple of our own - and the giver shows us no mercy or generosity then we know they are a crook already! We take their tainted apple knowing we deal with evil people. Better to find a generous person to take the apple from. If it is still a matter of life and death, then we are forced to deal with the devil - but should aim to extricate ourselves as soon as possible. Ultimately the devil loses because as already said - chances are you won't get back what you lend! (the problem in the credit markets now)
Maybe I'll take the apple and owe 2 apples in the future, which I know I won't have, but I might be able to get them magically by luck and gambling.
If we ever gamble then walk into the poorest, grubbiest gambling hall. Why? because these people don't make much money, which means we might. If the gambling hall is full of lights and good furnishings, if it offers cheap drinks etc they make a lot of money and we will lose. Obviously on average people lose when gambling, that is why gambling halls exists. On average I will lose if I gamble, but maybe today is my lucky day... but it is more likely that today is not my lucky day, so there is never a reason to gamble (with what we cannot afford to lose).
So the situation is simple. Never spend what you have not got, never give what you cannot afford to lose, and never accept anything that you can't repay (and if you can repay it then why do you need it in the first place).
For these reason I never borrow money, because I know I'll need to pay it back and if I can pay it back then why not save until such time as I can spend it? Very simple really.
So people argue that houses prices are far to expensive to afford all in one go!! We need to take out a mortgage. But why are they too expensive? it is because there is competition for houses from people who are prepared to take out loans. Thus to get what they want people are not limited by how much money they have, but how much money can can afford to borrow. They feel richer. But all this does is pushes up prices so that we pay more for the same things we would have got anyway... and after having got them we then need to pay back a large percentage of our wealth to the loaner - the parasite. As loans become cheaper, prices therfore rise - and as loans become more expensive prices therefore fall (as is illustrated by the housing markets). If loans where illegal then houses would find their TRUE value!!
If credit was illegal, then we would all still be competing for the same things, but with a fixed pool of real money, and once we had bought things that would be it... a single payment with no repayments. We would actually be richer and the eschelons of parasites who work in the city doing nothing but sucking the wealth out of the honest workers would have to get proper jobs! Consider that current house prices are only a half of the amount we need to pay back in loans. Where the estate agent sells for £170,000, factor in the solicitors and bankers and the printing presses (inflation) and we will actually pay back more like £400,000 to get a house : that is the TRUE average price of a house recently! 24years worth of salary for the average person: almost half of all the money they will ever own! Worth about £40,000 cash up front in reality.
The flip side to this is that we are used to getting "interest" on our investments. Even without thinking this is nonsense... what! money is like a plant? ... it grows!!? Obviously absurd. What really happens is that our money is lent to some fool who then becomes the host to our own parasitic behaviour, sucking the wealth out of them. I suppose the idiom "(s)he who lives by interest shall die by credit" holds here.
Its all a lot easier however if we don't get all the millions of parasites involved in the first place and just refuse credit. So I have always said I won't buy a house until I can buy one is cash.
Now that day doesn't seem too far away ;-) because all the parasites have run out of hosts and they are dying. The hosts (the people who do an honest days work) need to extract their money from the hold of these parasites, invest it ethically so that where they are loaned it is at low interest rates, and not in exploitative risky loans: And stop buying things on credit... for ever!
Now sadly this argument doesn't entirely work any more because the parasites and devils have got really corrupt in the passed few decades!! There is a much easier way to make money than to work for it... turn on a money printing press. The law says that it is illegal to print money without a license... and the few people who can, effectively control the country. While we play the game the straight way, working and saving they just print away for nothing. This breaking of their own rules has caused the whole game to break down. If my saving were once a percentage of the total money of the country one day, after the printing press has been on over night I wake up to find my savings only a fraction of the now growing total money.
It is better to be in debt these days, take as much as you can from the parasites and run, default, change address and name and run. This is the rules of the game they have created and I suppose they will suffer for it. If you are in debt just get bankrupt by any means (this is what the parasites do). Sadly we can't steal from the tax payer like the parasites. But, change name, dodge the credit references (like the city has been doing for a decade), perform identity fraud, whatever and pop up somewhere else. These are the rules that the parasites have lived by, if you are a victim then I suppose play along.
For me I have ignore the game, and will ignore all this too. I have 4 simple rules I've always lived by that I hope will become law one day. The 4 laws of economics are.
I have had a principle all my life which is "don't spend what you don't have." Taught me by my mother, which my father didn't follow sadly (it killed him).
Its more than a principle really, it is reality. You can't give what you don't have! If I don't have an apple then I can't give you an apple. If I sell the apple for money, then I can give you money; but if I don't have an apple then I can't sell it and I can't give you any money. There is no such thing as bank loan! (banks don't keep any apples - if you follow the analogy)
Now if I give you an apple, it is probably as a friend and I won't expect it back (this is the Godly way), but might expect you to be more generous with your things in future. So that if at some later stage you refused to let me borrow a pen I might begin to question whether I give you anything else in the future (but I won't hold that against you - just learn what you are like). Once given it is a gift, and that is the end of the transaction.
The rule here is never give anything that you expect back! because you will (quite probably) never see it again! People who abuse our generosity lose our friendship (which since we are generous people - makes it their severe loss to them), but always remain generous with what we can afford to lose!
Now someone may lure us into giving them the apple with a promise of 2 apples in return! Idiots. We aren't expecting even 1 apple back, let alone 2!! If we give them the apple it is because we can "afford to lose it", even if they promise us the moon, they can't get what we can't afford (banks break this rule every day).
In reverse someone may try to give us an apple on the agreement that we give them 2 apples in return. Then it must be assumed we will have two apples in the future to give them, so why not just wait for those 2 apples instead of take the 1 now?
If we are starving and we will die before we get an apple of our own - and the giver shows us no mercy or generosity then we know they are a crook already! We take their tainted apple knowing we deal with evil people. Better to find a generous person to take the apple from. If it is still a matter of life and death, then we are forced to deal with the devil - but should aim to extricate ourselves as soon as possible. Ultimately the devil loses because as already said - chances are you won't get back what you lend! (the problem in the credit markets now)
Maybe I'll take the apple and owe 2 apples in the future, which I know I won't have, but I might be able to get them magically by luck and gambling.
If we ever gamble then walk into the poorest, grubbiest gambling hall. Why? because these people don't make much money, which means we might. If the gambling hall is full of lights and good furnishings, if it offers cheap drinks etc they make a lot of money and we will lose. Obviously on average people lose when gambling, that is why gambling halls exists. On average I will lose if I gamble, but maybe today is my lucky day... but it is more likely that today is not my lucky day, so there is never a reason to gamble (with what we cannot afford to lose).
So the situation is simple. Never spend what you have not got, never give what you cannot afford to lose, and never accept anything that you can't repay (and if you can repay it then why do you need it in the first place).
For these reason I never borrow money, because I know I'll need to pay it back and if I can pay it back then why not save until such time as I can spend it? Very simple really.
So people argue that houses prices are far to expensive to afford all in one go!! We need to take out a mortgage. But why are they too expensive? it is because there is competition for houses from people who are prepared to take out loans. Thus to get what they want people are not limited by how much money they have, but how much money can can afford to borrow. They feel richer. But all this does is pushes up prices so that we pay more for the same things we would have got anyway... and after having got them we then need to pay back a large percentage of our wealth to the loaner - the parasite. As loans become cheaper, prices therfore rise - and as loans become more expensive prices therefore fall (as is illustrated by the housing markets). If loans where illegal then houses would find their TRUE value!!
If credit was illegal, then we would all still be competing for the same things, but with a fixed pool of real money, and once we had bought things that would be it... a single payment with no repayments. We would actually be richer and the eschelons of parasites who work in the city doing nothing but sucking the wealth out of the honest workers would have to get proper jobs! Consider that current house prices are only a half of the amount we need to pay back in loans. Where the estate agent sells for £170,000, factor in the solicitors and bankers and the printing presses (inflation) and we will actually pay back more like £400,000 to get a house : that is the TRUE average price of a house recently! 24years worth of salary for the average person: almost half of all the money they will ever own! Worth about £40,000 cash up front in reality.
The flip side to this is that we are used to getting "interest" on our investments. Even without thinking this is nonsense... what! money is like a plant? ... it grows!!? Obviously absurd. What really happens is that our money is lent to some fool who then becomes the host to our own parasitic behaviour, sucking the wealth out of them. I suppose the idiom "(s)he who lives by interest shall die by credit" holds here.
Its all a lot easier however if we don't get all the millions of parasites involved in the first place and just refuse credit. So I have always said I won't buy a house until I can buy one is cash.
Now that day doesn't seem too far away ;-) because all the parasites have run out of hosts and they are dying. The hosts (the people who do an honest days work) need to extract their money from the hold of these parasites, invest it ethically so that where they are loaned it is at low interest rates, and not in exploitative risky loans: And stop buying things on credit... for ever!
Now sadly this argument doesn't entirely work any more because the parasites and devils have got really corrupt in the passed few decades!! There is a much easier way to make money than to work for it... turn on a money printing press. The law says that it is illegal to print money without a license... and the few people who can, effectively control the country. While we play the game the straight way, working and saving they just print away for nothing. This breaking of their own rules has caused the whole game to break down. If my saving were once a percentage of the total money of the country one day, after the printing press has been on over night I wake up to find my savings only a fraction of the now growing total money.
It is better to be in debt these days, take as much as you can from the parasites and run, default, change address and name and run. This is the rules of the game they have created and I suppose they will suffer for it. If you are in debt just get bankrupt by any means (this is what the parasites do). Sadly we can't steal from the tax payer like the parasites. But, change name, dodge the credit references (like the city has been doing for a decade), perform identity fraud, whatever and pop up somewhere else. These are the rules that the parasites have lived by, if you are a victim then I suppose play along.
For me I have ignore the game, and will ignore all this too. I have 4 simple rules I've always lived by that I hope will become law one day. The 4 laws of economics are.
- Never buy anything you can't afford. Never borrow! only wait until you can afford it (which will usually be a fraction of the time to clear the debt anyway).
- Never accept what you can't repay immediately (in which case why accept it).
- Never lend anything you can't afford to lose (that includes bank savings).
- The corrollary is: Don't expect interest on your savings (except to match inflation - which wouldn't happen anyway if we followed these laws)
p.s. the last entry...
and if the self was to think, and these thoughts were to come from the self and be thought by the self, then where do these thoughts come from if we are thinking about ourselves?
To put another way : - when we think about ourselves, are we thinking about the thing which is having the thoughts? And if we are could we not think about a particular thought itself? So that what we think about is this thought itself? And if we did that, then what is the thought about? Can we really say, "itself"?
Its the self-reference problem anyway.
To put another way : - when we think about ourselves, are we thinking about the thing which is having the thoughts? And if we are could we not think about a particular thought itself? So that what we think about is this thought itself? And if we did that, then what is the thought about? Can we really say, "itself"?
Its the self-reference problem anyway.
Monday, 12 May 2008
If Nation is a myth then so is Self
The obvious way forward for the arguments about organisations and collectives - which are fairly easy to understand and to see in the news how they cause human misery - is that the nation we call ourselves is identically a myth.
The danger of these Anarchist arguments - it has not escaped me - is that if people were generally told to disobey authority then chaos would break out. Most people would start by disobeying the established order, but then would become fearful and start looking to new alliances. The weak (and therefore power greedy) would miss the opportunity for world peace and would capitalise upon peoples' insecurities and fears herding them together into factions and then setting factions against one another to gain control of the area. Then protection rackets set up and its back to systems of government again.
The process only works if it is internalised first (as I think Buddha said) [p.s. its good this spell checker actually - if a word is underlined as wrong I can take that as assurance that it is actually spelled right :-)].
Arguments so far stem from the absurdity we have in this world of people - who are at root the same - seeing themselves as fundamentally different because of their nationality. And worse the government calling upon them to behave as different. Britain for example doesn't exist. If it does exist it is only the union of tribes created by a king - who became a parliament of commoners - who uses this same Britain to justify their authority. A circular argument. The absurdity is most obvious when countries force their people to fight one another. And the reasons why? because we are under threat. Except we are only under threat because the people in the other country think they are under threat from us! Name a war where the soldiers thought they were fighting an innocent people to plunder them? They either thought they were freeing them from some great evil, educating them, or protecting their own people. Odd that we can be made to believe that killing humans ever helped the human race!
Anyway apply that argument to ourselves and it is identical, tho harder to see. We commonly believe ourselves to be like a soverign state with ourselves as the master giving orders over a land we own.
The homunculous argument is well criticsed almost everywhere - because who then takes on mastery of the self? Another smaller self? That is the first critique of such a model (both of psychology and government).
If we look at ourselves tho there is absolutely nothing there. We simply cannot point to any thing in the world and call that us. We are like an invisible being looking out of a darkened room from behind a pane of hemetically sealed glass, hidden both to ourselves and everyone else. Of course this is the homunculous argument starting up again - because is their a pane of glass separating the self behind the self.
This hidden self, never seen, and never to be seen, absolutely no evidence at all ever - is what I have suggested would be created by a Being unable to perform full self reference. It does help meditation considering the self to be something hidden in the very act of experiencing the world (very Heideggar if you are familiar).
Buddha never denies the self - he only says that we should recognise all outer things as non-self. All phenomena are transitory - they become and they then eventually fade even mountains - this he says makes them unworthy of being self. What he is pointing to obliquely is the undivided eternal self that I believe backs, in one way or another, all religions - what some call God (where god is the manifestation of God or G-d or just " ").
The belief we have in this divided self (losely modelled upon the body, having birth and death) which is separate from other people and owns this body, and its experiences like the land of a nation giving commands to the limbs like the king and commanders. This is Hobbes' Leviathon in reverse. All the myths that surround us of property grow out from this fabrication - this fabrication is supported by the myths that surround us (or both).
It is pathetic to see Locke trying to justify the concept of property in his essays. Apparently these ideas were influential and back the American constitution! But obviously these myths are essential to authority so Locke was pleasing his masters well. (I've a book to write on the rise of authority and the not so innocent execution of Socrates).
So Locke argues: when a man eats a morsel of food and it lies in his stomach we must say that it is his food and not belonging to anyone else simply because to get at it another person would have to commit all kinds of other offenses. And if we agree that this is his food, then we may as well have an agreement that food is not to be taken from the mouth, and if we accept this then ... and so on - roughly from memory.
Well in a world of organ transplants and things it's not so obvious what "belongs" to who anymore.
I always thought that if we were to define ownership it must stem from creativity. We only own that which we make. But as Kropotkin would argue that nothing is original everything drawing upon the work, skill and experience passed down generation after generation.
Yes property is a myth, and the self that commands this property neither does it own the body or the experiences or the thoughts that supposedly issue from it.
The danger of these Anarchist arguments - it has not escaped me - is that if people were generally told to disobey authority then chaos would break out. Most people would start by disobeying the established order, but then would become fearful and start looking to new alliances. The weak (and therefore power greedy) would miss the opportunity for world peace and would capitalise upon peoples' insecurities and fears herding them together into factions and then setting factions against one another to gain control of the area. Then protection rackets set up and its back to systems of government again.
The process only works if it is internalised first (as I think Buddha said) [p.s. its good this spell checker actually - if a word is underlined as wrong I can take that as assurance that it is actually spelled right :-)].
Arguments so far stem from the absurdity we have in this world of people - who are at root the same - seeing themselves as fundamentally different because of their nationality. And worse the government calling upon them to behave as different. Britain for example doesn't exist. If it does exist it is only the union of tribes created by a king - who became a parliament of commoners - who uses this same Britain to justify their authority. A circular argument. The absurdity is most obvious when countries force their people to fight one another. And the reasons why? because we are under threat. Except we are only under threat because the people in the other country think they are under threat from us! Name a war where the soldiers thought they were fighting an innocent people to plunder them? They either thought they were freeing them from some great evil, educating them, or protecting their own people. Odd that we can be made to believe that killing humans ever helped the human race!
Anyway apply that argument to ourselves and it is identical, tho harder to see. We commonly believe ourselves to be like a soverign state with ourselves as the master giving orders over a land we own.
The homunculous argument is well criticsed almost everywhere - because who then takes on mastery of the self? Another smaller self? That is the first critique of such a model (both of psychology and government).
If we look at ourselves tho there is absolutely nothing there. We simply cannot point to any thing in the world and call that us. We are like an invisible being looking out of a darkened room from behind a pane of hemetically sealed glass, hidden both to ourselves and everyone else. Of course this is the homunculous argument starting up again - because is their a pane of glass separating the self behind the self.
This hidden self, never seen, and never to be seen, absolutely no evidence at all ever - is what I have suggested would be created by a Being unable to perform full self reference. It does help meditation considering the self to be something hidden in the very act of experiencing the world (very Heideggar if you are familiar).
Buddha never denies the self - he only says that we should recognise all outer things as non-self. All phenomena are transitory - they become and they then eventually fade even mountains - this he says makes them unworthy of being self. What he is pointing to obliquely is the undivided eternal self that I believe backs, in one way or another, all religions - what some call God (where god is the manifestation of God or G-d or just " ").
The belief we have in this divided self (losely modelled upon the body, having birth and death) which is separate from other people and owns this body, and its experiences like the land of a nation giving commands to the limbs like the king and commanders. This is Hobbes' Leviathon in reverse. All the myths that surround us of property grow out from this fabrication - this fabrication is supported by the myths that surround us (or both).
It is pathetic to see Locke trying to justify the concept of property in his essays. Apparently these ideas were influential and back the American constitution! But obviously these myths are essential to authority so Locke was pleasing his masters well. (I've a book to write on the rise of authority and the not so innocent execution of Socrates).
So Locke argues: when a man eats a morsel of food and it lies in his stomach we must say that it is his food and not belonging to anyone else simply because to get at it another person would have to commit all kinds of other offenses. And if we agree that this is his food, then we may as well have an agreement that food is not to be taken from the mouth, and if we accept this then ... and so on - roughly from memory.
Well in a world of organ transplants and things it's not so obvious what "belongs" to who anymore.
I always thought that if we were to define ownership it must stem from creativity. We only own that which we make. But as Kropotkin would argue that nothing is original everything drawing upon the work, skill and experience passed down generation after generation.
Yes property is a myth, and the self that commands this property neither does it own the body or the experiences or the thoughts that supposedly issue from it.
Sunday, 11 May 2008
Pain and Dukkha --> reroute to Buddhism
Having spoken to a Nepali friend and gotten a translation of Dukkha from Nepali I was going to write about an issue... namely that Buddha did not end sickness, old age and death... but he did end suffering. This means that sickness, old age and death are not in themselves suffering. Seeing reality we do not find these things as suffering, that suffering is an illusion. So has been my question and investigation, but not understood. My Nepali friend explainded that Dukkha has the meaning of sorrow to be distinguished from physical pain. I understood that while pain is real phenomenon, sorrow is unreal. A good distinction.
Anyway I began to read on the net and realise more importantly that I am not learned on matters of Buddhism and Dhamma and need to read and understand much more accurately than has been. So far, most learning has been from listening to others and to be honest I have spent more time trying to separate the truth from the heresay in conflicting accounts than actually learn anything. So I'll make a mark in the sand today and actually become learned on the actual records of Buddhism rather than from two thousand years of heresay and muttering that have sprung up around it.
I also realise that I am still tremendously evil! I still fail completely to overcome "thirst" for sensual pleasures, and I am still bound with a sense of "pride" and the worst bit is that I am not harmonious with my world around. There is still strong attachment to a sense of right/wrong. However its not just a matter of no longer looking for right/wrong which leads to confusion which is even worse - but the subtle management of attachment to that. It still infuriates when the self elected "authorities" (which they are in all countries) blatantly and recklessly act in the wrong way, yet still expect to keep the name of "authority" [take Burma as the latest example, after the banking crisis, and the wars and the endless list...]. Authority means "right" by definition, yet when they act wrong who do we follow while Right remains as the judge to their wrongness regardless. So far I say follow Right always since authority is a manmade right and is complete illusion. But maybe this is all pride and causes obstruction to the "authorities" which I imagine Buddha would say is the be avoided... its not clear to me at all.
OK I'll sort out some issues here...
> Form/Emptiness is one meaning of Form, but what of Nama and Rupa?
Nama - naming, Rupa the form that is named. In human being - nama-mental, rupa-physical.
Rupa is empty. What of nama?
> Did Buddha end Pain?
> 5 Skandas - the components. 1)Rupa (form)- all material things. 2)Vedana - Quality of object as good/bad/neutral 3) Sanna - recognition of an object (e.g. colours) 4)Sankhara - mental impact resulting from object 5)Vinnana - Consciousness, life force (e.g. taste, smell qualities) - subtly compare with Sanna.
> 12 fold causal pathway - nidana?
Former Life
ignorance
activities which produce karma
Current Life
consciousness
name and form (personality or identity)
the twelve domains (5 physical senses + the mind + forms, sounds, ..., thoughts)
contact (between objects and the senses)
sensation (registering the contact)
desire (for continued contact)
attachment
becoming (conception of a new life)
Future Life
birth
old age and death.
>Anatta
Anything we might identify as subject to change is non-self (Anatta). It is not therefore worth of calling myself. That is there is no positive definition of self - simply not the world. I can add hopefully to this the insight from self-reference : that the self were it to exist could not refer to itself in anything but empty name - the experience we have of endlessly seeking ourself is what we would expect of a self.
Some Basic Sutra sources
http://www.mettanet.org/
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/index.html
http://www.suttareadings.net/audio/index.html
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/index.htm
Anyway I began to read on the net and realise more importantly that I am not learned on matters of Buddhism and Dhamma and need to read and understand much more accurately than has been. So far, most learning has been from listening to others and to be honest I have spent more time trying to separate the truth from the heresay in conflicting accounts than actually learn anything. So I'll make a mark in the sand today and actually become learned on the actual records of Buddhism rather than from two thousand years of heresay and muttering that have sprung up around it.
I also realise that I am still tremendously evil! I still fail completely to overcome "thirst" for sensual pleasures, and I am still bound with a sense of "pride" and the worst bit is that I am not harmonious with my world around. There is still strong attachment to a sense of right/wrong. However its not just a matter of no longer looking for right/wrong which leads to confusion which is even worse - but the subtle management of attachment to that. It still infuriates when the self elected "authorities" (which they are in all countries) blatantly and recklessly act in the wrong way, yet still expect to keep the name of "authority" [take Burma as the latest example, after the banking crisis, and the wars and the endless list...]. Authority means "right" by definition, yet when they act wrong who do we follow while Right remains as the judge to their wrongness regardless. So far I say follow Right always since authority is a manmade right and is complete illusion. But maybe this is all pride and causes obstruction to the "authorities" which I imagine Buddha would say is the be avoided... its not clear to me at all.
OK I'll sort out some issues here...
> Form/Emptiness is one meaning of Form, but what of Nama and Rupa?
Nama - naming, Rupa the form that is named. In human being - nama-mental, rupa-physical.
Rupa is empty. What of nama?
> Did Buddha end Pain?
> 5 Skandas - the components. 1)Rupa (form)- all material things. 2)Vedana - Quality of object as good/bad/neutral 3) Sanna - recognition of an object (e.g. colours) 4)Sankhara - mental impact resulting from object 5)Vinnana - Consciousness, life force (e.g. taste, smell qualities) - subtly compare with Sanna.
> 12 fold causal pathway - nidana?
Former Life
ignorance
activities which produce karma
Current Life
consciousness
name and form (personality or identity)
the twelve domains (5 physical senses + the mind + forms, sounds, ..., thoughts)
contact (between objects and the senses)
sensation (registering the contact)
desire (for continued contact)
attachment
becoming (conception of a new life)
Future Life
birth
old age and death.
>Anatta
Anything we might identify as subject to change is non-self (Anatta). It is not therefore worth of calling myself. That is there is no positive definition of self - simply not the world. I can add hopefully to this the insight from self-reference : that the self were it to exist could not refer to itself in anything but empty name - the experience we have of endlessly seeking ourself is what we would expect of a self.
Some Basic Sutra sources
http://www.mettanet.org/
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/index.html
http://www.suttareadings.net/audio/index.html
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/index.htm
Thursday, 8 May 2008
Blog spell checker
Is there such a thing as English (British) and English (American)?
Britain is composed Wales, Scotland and England. In Wales the official language is Welsh, and while the official language of Scotland is English there is a language of Scots which might have a revival. English is a common folks language of England which came to prominence after the division of England from Normandy. It is a hybrid of Latin, Old German and French, but it is the language of the English, who are the people who come from the land which is called England. There is only one English in this country English(English) not English(British).
The colonial period spread this language around the globe and the various English colonies which include Northern America came to speak this language.
English is a free language which is not governed and does change, but at the same time there are standards of grammar and spelling which gave come to define the language. Certainly we are not free to just make it up as we go along... unless we do so knowingly of the incorrectness for "aeffect".
Now I sense that the Americans probably are not too happy about speaking a language names after their founding nation. I imagine a brief history of America goes... first there was Adam and Eve - or Dinosaurs depending upon your taste - and then soon after there was the Wild West a lawless time from which emerged the true American - firm jutting jaw, drooling accent, horse (or car) driving and faster than the next man at the draw. I don't suppose that colonial history enters into history classes much despite this being the foundations of American Law, constitution, economics, science, language, music, religion and customs - at least the route by which they arrived (e.g. Christian, Christmas, Halloween, Harvest festival i.e. thanks giving). Not much stems from the American Indians who have been pushed aside and murdered - except maybe the character of the cowboys if you follow Pirsig.
So why do they call their language English (American)? An oxymoron if ever there was one. This is getting into the same weird territory a people calling themselves Italian-Americans or American Jews.
Does English (American) follow the same rules as English (English). If it does then it it is English(English) i.e. English if it doesn't then why not call it American?
Then the on going issue - which the blogger spell checker is certainly confused by - of whether things are colored or coloured is solved.
This blog is in English. So things are coloured. The spell checker (it being a .com site) is actually for a different language called American. The proper spelling of coloured in that in this language.
Worth noting that linguistic evidence points to sudden changes in language when societies split. It is natural for the American peoples to start speaking their own language, so recognise that now and stop the confusion.
Simple - problem solved.
Britain is composed Wales, Scotland and England. In Wales the official language is Welsh, and while the official language of Scotland is English there is a language of Scots which might have a revival. English is a common folks language of England which came to prominence after the division of England from Normandy. It is a hybrid of Latin, Old German and French, but it is the language of the English, who are the people who come from the land which is called England. There is only one English in this country English(English) not English(British).
The colonial period spread this language around the globe and the various English colonies which include Northern America came to speak this language.
English is a free language which is not governed and does change, but at the same time there are standards of grammar and spelling which gave come to define the language. Certainly we are not free to just make it up as we go along... unless we do so knowingly of the incorrectness for "aeffect".
Now I sense that the Americans probably are not too happy about speaking a language names after their founding nation. I imagine a brief history of America goes... first there was Adam and Eve - or Dinosaurs depending upon your taste - and then soon after there was the Wild West a lawless time from which emerged the true American - firm jutting jaw, drooling accent, horse (or car) driving and faster than the next man at the draw. I don't suppose that colonial history enters into history classes much despite this being the foundations of American Law, constitution, economics, science, language, music, religion and customs - at least the route by which they arrived (e.g. Christian, Christmas, Halloween, Harvest festival i.e. thanks giving). Not much stems from the American Indians who have been pushed aside and murdered - except maybe the character of the cowboys if you follow Pirsig.
So why do they call their language English (American)? An oxymoron if ever there was one. This is getting into the same weird territory a people calling themselves Italian-Americans or American Jews.
Does English (American) follow the same rules as English (English). If it does then it it is English(English) i.e. English if it doesn't then why not call it American?
Then the on going issue - which the blogger spell checker is certainly confused by - of whether things are colored or coloured is solved.
This blog is in English. So things are coloured. The spell checker (it being a .com site) is actually for a different language called American. The proper spelling of coloured in that in this language.
Worth noting that linguistic evidence points to sudden changes in language when societies split. It is natural for the American peoples to start speaking their own language, so recognise that now and stop the confusion.
Simple - problem solved.
A picture the Earth. Which way up is it?
Picture the Earth.
Which way up is it? Is the North pole at the bottom or the top. Usually we picture it like this picture from Apollo 17 which Africa tapering downward, with Europe and USA in the top half and S.America and Australia in the bottom half.
Now imagine the Solar system with the planets orbiting the sun. Which way around is it? I imagine we continue the orientation and have the planets going clockwise around the sun, and the top of the Sun being the same half at the top of the Earth.
And the galaxy how do we orient that? And the Universe?
Actually it is arbitrary. There is no "way up" in the universe. It is a convention with no real part.
So why is the Northern Hemisphere Up and the Southern Down? Up is the direction of Sky and Sky is where the Gods live in space, light and brightness, while down is the darkness of the ground and the low creatures and the bad things. Naturally when European explorers drew the maps they put themselves at the top. The same way as Greenwich claims the Zero meridian which is also unreal and arbitrary.
This has no reality, it is all imaginary, but it is suprisingly robust in the mind and creates what looks like a reality, that the Earth should be this way not that.
This is what illusion looks like! It infiltrates everything, it is the source of all Evil, it is the work of devils and it is what causes suffering. There are three things which cause illusion: anger, greed and ego. The orientation of the Earth illusion arises from European greed and ego.
Likewise companies have an orientation. I notice when jobs become available it is usually at the bottom, people get promoted up and leave places at the bottom. Salaries rise upwards. People look upwards in their careers. But it is illusion.
When you look at it the work is done by the lowest paid - the sweat shops, the factories - and the pen pushers and management who do progressively less get paid progressively more. They argue their responsibility is greater - but look at the hyperbolic positions of top executives who can completely destroy companies get massive pay outs and the boys network looks after them and gets them new jobs.
There is no up and down in companies. It is illusion created by greed and ego.
So much of our lives is dominated by such illusions. Government being only one I have attached recently.
Wednesday, 7 May 2008
Daffodil 2008
So like a ghost I returned to that spot where the daffodil had shone in its brief moment of glory two years ago and in its place there stood a new form as marvelous as the last.
So I took a walk through the arboretum of cherry trees and pondered how things had changed in those two years since that fateful day. The huge horse chestnut tree that had towered above the lawns had been felled by the winter winds leaving only a naked scar in the grass of its now sawn trunk. I remembered in part what I had been thinking two years ago, about how then I missed the beauty of the world I had known with "my muse" - simply knowing her had infected all existence with the magic that I known was always there. My bleaker days then lacked that joy, the cherry blossoms fell as beautiful shapes upon my retina but did not stir my soul. I planned as I walked through those trees an escape, to embark on a voyage once again to the heights of celestial beauty and romance that I had known. But the plans of mortals are dreamed in a real world and the sense of freedom that day was from an ironic loss.
Now two years on I am stepping out of the gloom and my heart was remarking upon the beauty of the translucent cherry blossoms and the sky was opening, and I was thinking that these blossoms are every bit as beautiful as the daffodil, but they lacked one thing; they were not the daffodil, that is the rub always isn't it? that in matters like this only "this one" will do - it is no longer a matter of quality, it matters no more about form, this is what they call love. In love we find the waters that we long to drink, that without leave the world barren, make the once warming sun a burning tormenter. But, isn't this what Buddha warns us against? This is not Love, it is for one person above all others, one flower at the expense of the host. I can't see it yet, but isn't this Maya, the illusion of existences. My delusion, a belief in an individual unchanging being: "my muse", who before my eyes has disintegrated and I still haven't seen the weakness of the form I once addressed as "daughter of the moon". Even the moon changes, yet I am stuck in a phase, my foolish heart abandoning all for the one.
It must be the tragic truth I have long avoided that she died the day I met her, because she was never going to be the same again. That day was gone then, I tried to forget then; I remember still. I knew this, I have written this before; why is this so hard to grasp? What is it about this illusion of existence that is so impenetrable? Why do I insist so deeply against all the evidence that the existences that I desire should be so solid and unchanging? I know, I know, but I do not see.
I guess I fear also that when this illusion evaporates in the waking sun my world will be forever changed, and there is no going back. No longer will there be the security of solid, permanent people and places to rest upon, to take refuge in, to warm my heart beside. I and everything in this universe will be here for a day only, and tomorrow we start afresh. This is not how the fairy tales were supposed to be, this is not how I dreamed life would be, this is not what comforted me as I slept as a child: my father dust, my greatest love dust, the past all dust. I know in this lies liberation, but the medicine is a little too bitter just yet... but at least my heart is awakening from its crysalis this spring, clinging to a blade of grass still glistening in morning dew, to unfold its brilliant new wings to the warmth of a new day's light.
So I took a walk through the arboretum of cherry trees and pondered how things had changed in those two years since that fateful day. The huge horse chestnut tree that had towered above the lawns had been felled by the winter winds leaving only a naked scar in the grass of its now sawn trunk. I remembered in part what I had been thinking two years ago, about how then I missed the beauty of the world I had known with "my muse" - simply knowing her had infected all existence with the magic that I known was always there. My bleaker days then lacked that joy, the cherry blossoms fell as beautiful shapes upon my retina but did not stir my soul. I planned as I walked through those trees an escape, to embark on a voyage once again to the heights of celestial beauty and romance that I had known. But the plans of mortals are dreamed in a real world and the sense of freedom that day was from an ironic loss.
Now two years on I am stepping out of the gloom and my heart was remarking upon the beauty of the translucent cherry blossoms and the sky was opening, and I was thinking that these blossoms are every bit as beautiful as the daffodil, but they lacked one thing; they were not the daffodil, that is the rub always isn't it? that in matters like this only "this one" will do - it is no longer a matter of quality, it matters no more about form, this is what they call love. In love we find the waters that we long to drink, that without leave the world barren, make the once warming sun a burning tormenter. But, isn't this what Buddha warns us against? This is not Love, it is for one person above all others, one flower at the expense of the host. I can't see it yet, but isn't this Maya, the illusion of existences. My delusion, a belief in an individual unchanging being: "my muse", who before my eyes has disintegrated and I still haven't seen the weakness of the form I once addressed as "daughter of the moon". Even the moon changes, yet I am stuck in a phase, my foolish heart abandoning all for the one.
It must be the tragic truth I have long avoided that she died the day I met her, because she was never going to be the same again. That day was gone then, I tried to forget then; I remember still. I knew this, I have written this before; why is this so hard to grasp? What is it about this illusion of existence that is so impenetrable? Why do I insist so deeply against all the evidence that the existences that I desire should be so solid and unchanging? I know, I know, but I do not see.
I guess I fear also that when this illusion evaporates in the waking sun my world will be forever changed, and there is no going back. No longer will there be the security of solid, permanent people and places to rest upon, to take refuge in, to warm my heart beside. I and everything in this universe will be here for a day only, and tomorrow we start afresh. This is not how the fairy tales were supposed to be, this is not how I dreamed life would be, this is not what comforted me as I slept as a child: my father dust, my greatest love dust, the past all dust. I know in this lies liberation, but the medicine is a little too bitter just yet... but at least my heart is awakening from its crysalis this spring, clinging to a blade of grass still glistening in morning dew, to unfold its brilliant new wings to the warmth of a new day's light.
On Blasphemy, faith and the Law
So if I disagree or don't understand a sacred text and they haul me before the authorities to answer a charge of blasphemy or heresy...
I would answer, surely only God can decide whether I blaspheme, and do those who accuse me of blasphemy then claim to speak on behalf of God? and if they do speak on behalf of God then did God decide that they do? and if God did decide then show me the sign from God which indicates that they represent God rather than another? And if He did not then who are these imposters? If mortal men elect or decide who does and does not speak on behalf of God, then do they not put themselves before God and are they not the greater blasphemers, ones who deserve only the hatred of God and the loathing of men.
So Jesus might have said to his accusers... but then maybe he really was a blasphemer? How do we know?
That is the great question how do we, how does anyone, know? How do we know that a preacher speaks the word of God or the word of a devil? How do we know that the organisations be they the Vatican, the various Islamic schools, the Rabbis, the Christian preachers or anyone know themselves who is speaking the word of God or who is sent to deceive us?
Ultimately as has been argued in various guises throughout this blog the judgement rests upon our own shoulders. Whether we believe the teaching of a preacher, whether we even accept the authority of a church ultimately lies with us. To think blindly that a school or book is correct is to abdicate the responsibility for our own salvation, to reject our relationship with God who will accept us personally when we die, and judge us personally upon our own sins and beliefs, not as a member of an organisation, and not on the merits of other people! I mean when we die is God really going to accept the argument, "well everyone else said it was good"? The whole point of judgement is that we are tested on our ability to tell demons from angels. Even if we misunderstand a line of a sacred text, our misunderstanding will be punished by God - not by mortals - that is why we have jihad every day.
Some say the Koran is not to be questioned, that to challenge the faith of Islam, to question the accepted wisdom and the pillars is to challenge God. Well if we have faith in God let God punish those people! What possible reason is there for mortal men to conduct the affairs of God's Law? Either we do not think that God can enact his own Law, and this be remembered is a Being so mighty that He created the Universe! how simple to execute a trivial line of Law! or we lack faith in God all together and think that we must fill the Void left by our own lack of belief.
Is there any situation where a True Believer in the Law, a true devotee, a person who has truly submitted to the Law of God need to be brought to action to enact that Law! If it is Law then let it be, if it is not Law then don't make it so by acting it out!!! Let the sinners sin, their punishment will be metered out and we should only pity them for that! And while the mortal Laws are acted out by the unfaithful, maybe the religious councils might also want to push the sun around the sky as well, and the keep the hearts of Good people beating too! Or, maybe the religious councils are just the Wizard of Oz like fabrications that the politicians are.
Those who question and abandon a faith, are the same as those who question and join a faith. If you cannot leave a faith then you cannot join one also! Close the door of exit and of choice, and the you close the door of choice and entrance also.
To end, I do not say a word of truth above. It is simply for the reader to decided whether they agree or not. If you disagree and consider this Blasphemy you exercise choice, if you agree and consider this Truth you exercise choice. Either way you are the judge and God will be watching your choice as indeed he does mine, for upon these we will be judged ourselves.
I would answer, surely only God can decide whether I blaspheme, and do those who accuse me of blasphemy then claim to speak on behalf of God? and if they do speak on behalf of God then did God decide that they do? and if God did decide then show me the sign from God which indicates that they represent God rather than another? And if He did not then who are these imposters? If mortal men elect or decide who does and does not speak on behalf of God, then do they not put themselves before God and are they not the greater blasphemers, ones who deserve only the hatred of God and the loathing of men.
So Jesus might have said to his accusers... but then maybe he really was a blasphemer? How do we know?
That is the great question how do we, how does anyone, know? How do we know that a preacher speaks the word of God or the word of a devil? How do we know that the organisations be they the Vatican, the various Islamic schools, the Rabbis, the Christian preachers or anyone know themselves who is speaking the word of God or who is sent to deceive us?
Ultimately as has been argued in various guises throughout this blog the judgement rests upon our own shoulders. Whether we believe the teaching of a preacher, whether we even accept the authority of a church ultimately lies with us. To think blindly that a school or book is correct is to abdicate the responsibility for our own salvation, to reject our relationship with God who will accept us personally when we die, and judge us personally upon our own sins and beliefs, not as a member of an organisation, and not on the merits of other people! I mean when we die is God really going to accept the argument, "well everyone else said it was good"? The whole point of judgement is that we are tested on our ability to tell demons from angels. Even if we misunderstand a line of a sacred text, our misunderstanding will be punished by God - not by mortals - that is why we have jihad every day.
Some say the Koran is not to be questioned, that to challenge the faith of Islam, to question the accepted wisdom and the pillars is to challenge God. Well if we have faith in God let God punish those people! What possible reason is there for mortal men to conduct the affairs of God's Law? Either we do not think that God can enact his own Law, and this be remembered is a Being so mighty that He created the Universe! how simple to execute a trivial line of Law! or we lack faith in God all together and think that we must fill the Void left by our own lack of belief.
Is there any situation where a True Believer in the Law, a true devotee, a person who has truly submitted to the Law of God need to be brought to action to enact that Law! If it is Law then let it be, if it is not Law then don't make it so by acting it out!!! Let the sinners sin, their punishment will be metered out and we should only pity them for that! And while the mortal Laws are acted out by the unfaithful, maybe the religious councils might also want to push the sun around the sky as well, and the keep the hearts of Good people beating too! Or, maybe the religious councils are just the Wizard of Oz like fabrications that the politicians are.
Those who question and abandon a faith, are the same as those who question and join a faith. If you cannot leave a faith then you cannot join one also! Close the door of exit and of choice, and the you close the door of choice and entrance also.
To end, I do not say a word of truth above. It is simply for the reader to decided whether they agree or not. If you disagree and consider this Blasphemy you exercise choice, if you agree and consider this Truth you exercise choice. Either way you are the judge and God will be watching your choice as indeed he does mine, for upon these we will be judged ourselves.
Sunday, 4 May 2008
Progress = Sisyphine tragedy
Did I already cover this? anyway quickly...
what a strange idea is "progress". I believe it says that tomorrow will be better than today and that things are improving. It argues that the past is to be forgotten, that our ancestors were stupid monkeys and that our children will be geniuses. It says that the sum of human happiness is always increasing.
The evidence is all around ... isn't it? Child death rates are always dropping, technology is always advancing and more people are employed today than ever before. How could people have been happy without modern medicine, without TVs and without mobile phones are computers. Clearly everything is getting better.
Yes! how could people have been happy without mobile phones.... yet we were! Turning the logic around doesn't it mean that our children will be happy than we are today? That our lives are wasted here in the 21st Century because by the 22nd century they will look at us like stupid monkeys. The idea of progress makes our own lives now pointless and backward!
It does the same to other people in countries right now that either do not celebrate technological achievement, or have not undergone economic transformation. Are their lives worthless and backward 2?
The obvious observation is that yes we were happy 10 years ago without mobiles, and 150years ago without electricity and televisions and 10,000 years ago when the only technology was stone.
That is a milestone in human thinking - the realisation that human happiness is not a product of our material circumstances. And that was realised a long time ago!
Is it not also true that were human beings to ever get the formula for life right, then progress would actually end up in changing that formula and so would make things worse!
Progress it seems assumes that there is no final goal to human endevour... I mean what is it that we are aiming for? and how would we know when we get there? Its a very vague notion at best.
Personally I believe that we had the solution to life a long, long time ago and we've actually being working away from that for at least 400years if not more. America for example has never existed during a time of reality!
The problem today is that our records of the past are written by the historians and they record only the political ficgures... and as I've argued already political figures, like countries and nations, are narrative inventions and have no reality, and certainly don't represent the "average person", the wisdom of the day or the way of life. We have only fairy tales about the past, and so have a distorted view of life... just as we do today from watching the news, films and books.
So what if we put the idea of progress aside... then the world looks very different! Actually we have rising violence, mental illness and unhappiness! People work longer hours than ever before, and the largest percentage of the population ever are in employment. How is it that with all the technological advancement we need to work even harder than before to get what we need to be happy? Remember only men used to go to work before, now both men and women go to work and have to do all the house tasks as well! The evidence points in the opposite direction that people are more unhappy! And, even the peoples once "immune from this stuff" (to quote Robert Palmer) in what the West calls "undeveloped" countries are now thinking in these terms... they look at themselves as being backward and unhappy!
Well being "undeveloped" is a blissful dream compared with being "developed", mke no mistake. Being developed means... to be "progressing" to eternity toward some vague unrealisable utopia. On an eternal tread mill we become like Sisyphus forever struggling toward a better world only to see it fade into the past and a new mirage appear in the glowing Progressive future. It is completely mindless and senseless, a narrative trap that too many people are beginning to talk with.
There is no Development, and no Progress. Whether we live in a hut in the forest with sticks and stones, or we live in a Californian mansion beside the sea with an executive position and a dozen hispanic slaves actually they are the same! The only question then is which is the more sustainable (ecologically, practically and fairly assuming that all people should be able to enjoy this) and the easier to come by... and i'd happy just walk into the forest and take up the first rather than have the hassle of working through college, and years of 9-5 on the off chance my goals came true... and then what?
And in the last paragraph hides the rub... the goals of progress become ever higher and more unobtainable.. and as they become scarecer the higher their price and the more people want them. Already the worlds resources can only just support the global population living the average lifestyle of the UK. That would mean raizing the entire planet for resources and land. The US consumes twice that of the UK and if anyone dreams of that let them remember that only 1 in 2 could ever have it and the other half of the world would die. And the global population will double anyway... so even to have the UKs level will mean the starvation of half the world. Oh but of course "Progress" will solve these problems... but for what purpose when Progress made these problems... and we can be happy with or without?
The reason for Progress i have argued throughout the blog is the status-quo. Drawing more and more people around the world into longer and longer hours labour, tricking them into giving up their lands and birthrights, and enslaving them in factories to make cheap goods that support the pinnacles of the dream that they struggle in vain to attain... that is the Sisyphine tragedy...
The donkey forever trudging toward the carrot that is held by its owner sitting on the cart it pulls, and who always promises that when you get the carrot you can be like me sitting on the cart. And the Ouroboros smiled!
Time for a new narrative. One of attainable happiness in the here and now for everyone, that does not get dished out by the establishment with meal tickets and wages, one that comes from within, that is secure and unbreakable... one that comes from being kind and good, that is the truth that we all once knew, but have since forgotten.
what a strange idea is "progress". I believe it says that tomorrow will be better than today and that things are improving. It argues that the past is to be forgotten, that our ancestors were stupid monkeys and that our children will be geniuses. It says that the sum of human happiness is always increasing.
The evidence is all around ... isn't it? Child death rates are always dropping, technology is always advancing and more people are employed today than ever before. How could people have been happy without modern medicine, without TVs and without mobile phones are computers. Clearly everything is getting better.
Yes! how could people have been happy without mobile phones.... yet we were! Turning the logic around doesn't it mean that our children will be happy than we are today? That our lives are wasted here in the 21st Century because by the 22nd century they will look at us like stupid monkeys. The idea of progress makes our own lives now pointless and backward!
It does the same to other people in countries right now that either do not celebrate technological achievement, or have not undergone economic transformation. Are their lives worthless and backward 2?
The obvious observation is that yes we were happy 10 years ago without mobiles, and 150years ago without electricity and televisions and 10,000 years ago when the only technology was stone.
That is a milestone in human thinking - the realisation that human happiness is not a product of our material circumstances. And that was realised a long time ago!
Is it not also true that were human beings to ever get the formula for life right, then progress would actually end up in changing that formula and so would make things worse!
Progress it seems assumes that there is no final goal to human endevour... I mean what is it that we are aiming for? and how would we know when we get there? Its a very vague notion at best.
Personally I believe that we had the solution to life a long, long time ago and we've actually being working away from that for at least 400years if not more. America for example has never existed during a time of reality!
The problem today is that our records of the past are written by the historians and they record only the political ficgures... and as I've argued already political figures, like countries and nations, are narrative inventions and have no reality, and certainly don't represent the "average person", the wisdom of the day or the way of life. We have only fairy tales about the past, and so have a distorted view of life... just as we do today from watching the news, films and books.
So what if we put the idea of progress aside... then the world looks very different! Actually we have rising violence, mental illness and unhappiness! People work longer hours than ever before, and the largest percentage of the population ever are in employment. How is it that with all the technological advancement we need to work even harder than before to get what we need to be happy? Remember only men used to go to work before, now both men and women go to work and have to do all the house tasks as well! The evidence points in the opposite direction that people are more unhappy! And, even the peoples once "immune from this stuff" (to quote Robert Palmer) in what the West calls "undeveloped" countries are now thinking in these terms... they look at themselves as being backward and unhappy!
Well being "undeveloped" is a blissful dream compared with being "developed", mke no mistake. Being developed means... to be "progressing" to eternity toward some vague unrealisable utopia. On an eternal tread mill we become like Sisyphus forever struggling toward a better world only to see it fade into the past and a new mirage appear in the glowing Progressive future. It is completely mindless and senseless, a narrative trap that too many people are beginning to talk with.
There is no Development, and no Progress. Whether we live in a hut in the forest with sticks and stones, or we live in a Californian mansion beside the sea with an executive position and a dozen hispanic slaves actually they are the same! The only question then is which is the more sustainable (ecologically, practically and fairly assuming that all people should be able to enjoy this) and the easier to come by... and i'd happy just walk into the forest and take up the first rather than have the hassle of working through college, and years of 9-5 on the off chance my goals came true... and then what?
And in the last paragraph hides the rub... the goals of progress become ever higher and more unobtainable.. and as they become scarecer the higher their price and the more people want them. Already the worlds resources can only just support the global population living the average lifestyle of the UK. That would mean raizing the entire planet for resources and land. The US consumes twice that of the UK and if anyone dreams of that let them remember that only 1 in 2 could ever have it and the other half of the world would die. And the global population will double anyway... so even to have the UKs level will mean the starvation of half the world. Oh but of course "Progress" will solve these problems... but for what purpose when Progress made these problems... and we can be happy with or without?
The reason for Progress i have argued throughout the blog is the status-quo. Drawing more and more people around the world into longer and longer hours labour, tricking them into giving up their lands and birthrights, and enslaving them in factories to make cheap goods that support the pinnacles of the dream that they struggle in vain to attain... that is the Sisyphine tragedy...
The donkey forever trudging toward the carrot that is held by its owner sitting on the cart it pulls, and who always promises that when you get the carrot you can be like me sitting on the cart. And the Ouroboros smiled!
Time for a new narrative. One of attainable happiness in the here and now for everyone, that does not get dished out by the establishment with meal tickets and wages, one that comes from within, that is secure and unbreakable... one that comes from being kind and good, that is the truth that we all once knew, but have since forgotten.
Thursday, 1 May 2008
Don't have to be intelligent to compete
Competition is a natural law. They speak of bacteria competing for resources, or molecules competing for binding sites. It is simply the sustained gaining the critical resources in a game. If an entity does not accumulate the resources needed to stay in the game then it is out. It goes on to play a different game.
So bacteria, leaves in the wind, dust, rain, people, birds all compete for various things from staying on the window ledge to winning a war.
Humans have this pre-Copernican view that they are the centre of the universe: a compromise from the infantile thinking that they individually are the centre of the universe. They often presume that they are highly successful in the world, have a far superior intellect and capability and play games that the rest of Life would be grateful to be envious of (if they could be either).
But, that intellect and mental capability itself has evolved as a result of competition. The competition that we think we are taking part in: chess, college, politics its part of an even bigger game that has led to the evolution of these traits!
Our very ability to play games is only a strategy in a vastly superior game called Life, which we aren't even aware of! How naive then to think that we are better able to play games that our fellow "livers"!! that we understand life!
So bacteria, leaves in the wind, dust, rain, people, birds all compete for various things from staying on the window ledge to winning a war.
Humans have this pre-Copernican view that they are the centre of the universe: a compromise from the infantile thinking that they individually are the centre of the universe. They often presume that they are highly successful in the world, have a far superior intellect and capability and play games that the rest of Life would be grateful to be envious of (if they could be either).
But, that intellect and mental capability itself has evolved as a result of competition. The competition that we think we are taking part in: chess, college, politics its part of an even bigger game that has led to the evolution of these traits!
Our very ability to play games is only a strategy in a vastly superior game called Life, which we aren't even aware of! How naive then to think that we are better able to play games that our fellow "livers"!! that we understand life!
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