Oh dear Zelenskyy and West seems you don't speak for all Ukrainians

War is always an illusion because it never fits into the narratives of the warmongers.

This makes it very hard for soldiers because they will never know what they are fighting and dying for. They may believe one thing, or have been told one thing but its never the whole truth. Every soldier who has ever fought and died has always necessarily only known half the truth and so has always given their life for a lie.

Case in point here in the case of MH17. A Russian and a Ukrainian have been charged with bringing down the plane and killing 298 people.

Apart from the tragedy that yet another civil war has caused, there is the obvious question why a Ukrainian is firing Russian missiles against the Ukrainians.

According to the West we are sending weapons and support to the Ukrainians who are all fighting the Russians and Zelenskyy represents all Ukrainians in their fight against Russia.

Oh dear. It's not true. Plenty of Ukrainians have no affinity for either the West or Zelenskyy who assumed power as part of this sudden wave of pro-European sentiment that seems to have erupted from no where in 2014. The elections just 2 years earlier in 2012 did not indicate this.

Well broadly the discovery that the US is involved makes this look like yet another CIA plot. Had the Ukrainians decided it by themselves it would be more believable but with the CIA behind them the result is all very suspicious. Most famously there was the counter revolution in Iran in 1953 where the MI6 and CIA persuaded the people to reinstate the Western backed Shah and put Iran back under Western control. Its easy to do and the rise of Western backed leaders in Ukraine just fits the pattern of CIA coups around the world over the last 70 years.

But now we find out that not all Ukrainians have been fooled by the West. Plenty have been fooled by the East too. This is how civil wars really happen.

Which all raises the question why get involved. Its all lies which just underlies what a waste of time it is. I mean waste of time for those who want to do more with their lives than just chasing shadows.

But there are plenty happy to chase their tails and shadow box their reflections so I guess we let them get on with it.

So what is Enlightenment?

Ain't this the on going question?

So the thing that holds us back is "standing in the wrong place." But the problem is where do we stand?

The place we probably never considered before is that we habitually stand within ourselves.

And when someone says be compassionate, or be generous, or non-self, or think of others we tend to just leave ourselves and stand inside someone else. This is where this current stream of the blog took off last summer. In fact we can stand wherever we like. If we have children we may very well stand with them before even our self. If we are a soldier we may stand with our King or Country before even ourselves, or we stand with our comrades in arms. We can stand anywhere. And attachment is when we either don't want to let go and move or don't even realise we are standing somewhere.

But all this standing is flawed because we are picking conditional platforms on which to stand. All the things in the universe are temporary. They have at one point not existed and have been made from other things that are not themselves and will one day dissolve back into the universe. And that is not a "merge" with the universe: they will become fully extinct like they never existed. Whatever we are standing on will one day dissolve. Nothing in the universe is permanently safe.

Now that last bit if very hard for those who still need a corporeal, tangible place to stand. We look through our senses and find things to believe in and on which to found our lives. But this is mistake #1. Nothing in our senses is a solid place to stand.

Then we make mistake #2 and decide to stand with our mind and consciousness. But when we are asleep and consciousness has disintegrated, where shall we stand then? Consciousness and mind are not stable places to stand either. Mind is always changing like the weather, sometimes focused, sometimes loose, sometimes upset, sometimes still.

But its not our failure to find a solid place to stand, the problem is in trying to stand some where permanently at all!

That desire to place our metaphysical feet in a solid place that will not change and give us a fixed vantage point to look out on the universe. That very grasping is the entirely unnecessary and pointless problem.

So why do we do it?

Well religions try to stop this with God. By putting our faith in God who is beyond all understanding we get used to not placing our feet in the corporeal mortal world.

The great test of our spiritual advancement is to what extent the world affects us. The less we stand in the world, the less our foundations are upset when it crumbles.

But we can't fake this. We can turn ourselves into a stone and pretend that because nothing affects us we are hard and strong and enlightened. A stone is not enlightened.

The measure of our strength is the opposite. It is the degree to which we can open up to the world and let all its difficulties and upsets flood in without fear, and still handle it. That is what not being affected is.

When we have our feet in this corporeal world then we become protective of the parts on which we stand and that makes us fearful and defensive. We are not free and we get dragged in.

Enlightenment is the opposite of this. And the religious person, because they understand this at some level, is much better at shifting where they stand when it starts to crumble.

Now death is the ultimate crumbling and we only really discover how much we have stood on the bit of the world called "our body" or "self" when we face death.

Those who understand that we have no need for feet in this world at all, they are liberated from all these concerns. They are free to let the whole world be as it is, to live without the need to protect what they have unwisely or unconsciously become stuck on. When change is needed they are free to change.

WE CANT FAKE THIS. We can't pretend we don't care when cherished things are taken from us, we can't fake fear of death and loss of self. If we are standing on these, and getting support and sustainence from these then it will hurt when they are taken.

But God or the Unconditional is something we can't grasp at. It is not a new place to stand. It is getting used to not standing in a fixed place at all.

I believe we can accelerate the learning of this by gaining deep meditation states which step by step remove the world and reveal the unconditional in ever greater purity. But of course this is far beyond mental "discernment."

The brain works by discerning things. When we birdwatch we see a bird, or is it a bat or something else flying. If it's a bird we can watch what it is doing and see it going about its life and make observations. How it rests, or flies, or how it eats, or what song it makes. And all the while the brain is deciding whether to go this way or that. It is always seeking this or that. This is discursive thinking. we want to know what it is and what it is not. This very blog started by wanting to know what Enlightenment is. And initially we will struggle to get our brains around this because we are limited by this or that. But Enlightenment is beyond this or that, and discursive thinking. Indeed looking down the telescope of discursive thinking and playing the game of this or that means we are completely missing the fact that we are thinking. It doesn't matter what we are thinking or questioning, we need observe the fact that we are doing this at all. Clearly being aware we are thinking at all is far superior to anything we can think.

And so the onion gets unwrapped. When we are seeking answers to a question we have stood in the land of thinking. Whatever we find we will always be bound to the fact we are thinking, and unable to escape the borders of the land of thinking and go beyond. This is Descartes. His decision to Doubt is where the whole saga started and ended. Once standing in the Land of Doubt he was always going to find that he couldn't Doubt that he was doubting. It was the starting condition. It is where he chose to stand. And all he discovered was his initial decision.

Likewise starting with the question "What is Enlightenment?" has already doomed the investigation because we have chosen question and answer as our method and we are already standing there and bound to that.

To Enlighten we need unpeel this and gradually resist the desire to make a stand anywhere in the quest to become free.

We start with Freedom but then, like Descartes, we make some heroic decision to embark on a journey and strike off in some direction and immediately get ourselves bound and enslaved to a journey and leave our Freedom behind.

Someone repeatedly questioning a monk about what is Enlightenment was getting no answer and after many years decided there was no more point and stormed off out of the monastery. The monk called him by name and he stopped and turned around, and the monk said in that moment you were enlightened. I think the point here is that the questioning mind is not the place to stand if you want freedom. Too many rules, too much hard work. But when someone calls you by name and you instinctively turn around, it is simple honest, and involves no thought, and yet who would deny it was real? We turned around! We are engaged with reality even when we are not thinking. We are already in touch with reality before we even settle down to answer a question, before we even decide where to place our feet. That place we come from is closer to enlightenment than anything we have decided to do.

And this "source" comes from really profound and almost unbelievable places. "Time" is actually something we think! we do not come from time. If we think about it time is built from memories for the past, plans and expectations for the future and then the things going on now. But we ignore most of what is going on now, cos it seems mostly irrelevant. We don't look out of the train window because we are thinking about where we are going and what we will say and do when we get there. The future is much more important than the present it seems.

But actually this is ridiculous isn't it. We don't really know what will happen. Chances are all those things we planned to say to our friend when we meet won't ever come out, we'll end up talking about other things. I always think meditation teachers over do this, in that some planning can be useful, but its not a wise existence. Far more important than saying the right thing to someone when we meet them, is realising that the "future" does not exist. It's at best a fantasy that bears some resemblance to what will happen anyway so what benefit in making a fake version now, and at worst it never happens and is completely fake and pointless. True getting on the train was linked to expecting to meet our friend, but how often does something happen and they can't make it or something unexpected happens. The point is when we are getting on the train to meet our friend, we are just getting on the train to meet our friend, why not just get on the train to meet our friend as it is right now. We are not actually meeting our friend yet, we need get in the train first. And so on. Each moment of the journey from home to friend has its own reality that we can sail along without really dwelling on the future or past. Now if we ever get the chance to just sail along without reference to past or future (no memory and no imagination) then we will find there is just Now! "Now" is a stage on which the world happens. The Now-Stage is actually permanent and unconditional. This is how it allows the world and time to happen within it. If the Now-Stage was actually something then the world could not be this. If the Now-Stage was Green then the world could not be green. If it was "large" then the world could not be large. This I think is what Heideggar means by Being hiding itself. By the time we have seen that the universe is large we have left the Present Moment or the Now-Stage which cannot be large itself.

Present Moment is a very special "place" to get to. If we want a place to stand this is it. Meditation is the way. Long periods of time sitting with actual events as they happen. Not as we think them, or expect them, or remember them. Just as they are. Its hard. It takes practice to free ourselves from the bad habits. In breathing meditation we look only at the breath and explore it as it is. Not as we remember it, or as we expect it to be, or as we think it but by trying to get through to the fact its actually there. Something that is really there. Something that is really happening.

It hard in this multimedia age where we are constantly being distracted by fake media that needs us to read or watch and enter the world of imagination. Even a "live" news report is not "really" happening, its "over there" in some imaginary place. I mean if we were there and also saw it on the TV at the same time then we have some reality, but TV can be recorded and replayed: reality never can! A Present Moment approach would simply be to note that a notification has popped up, and we are just going to note it, and then note the activity in our brain that wants to find out what its about and just keep watching everything going on as it happens, but not engaging with it and reading the notification and triggering all the imagination and thinking it will start. This kind of watching if called Vipassana or Mindfulness meditation. We are only interested that things are going on, but not what is going on.

It quickly get impossible to think about. Present Moment is not sandwiched between past and future. These things do not really exist, they fade away as the onion gets unpeeled.  And the Present Moment expands to fill everything. This is the timeless present from which all things come and everything happens. When we have a memory it pops into the Present Moment and when we go into it, it is like opening a book or switching on the TV. This is fine as long as we don't forget to close it and come back out into timeless Present Moment.

And so it is with this blog. Having run at full speed into the question of "What is Enlightenment?" it turns out this very quest is in the wrong direction and the further we go down that road the more chains we accumulate and the more ensnared and unfree we become. The right way is the opposite way. Look at the world from which that question came, and which supports that question, and the mind and reality into which this exploration right here has popped into.

And ultimately to realise that no where in all this space is there anywhere we need to run to in order to stand. We were fine before we even began.

Okay everything can be misunderstood. That can be a call for people to become stones. If we start from the timeless Present Moment in pure freedom then what is there to do. I may as well continue as I am. Except that likely means carry on protecting the precious places I call home and mine. There is nowhere to rest in all this world. If we are complacent and hiding somewhere safe then we may well be on the way to being a stone. This does not mean start running from this spot to prove we are not bound to it either. That is even worse. Where are we going to run to if there is no where to rest? Its because there is no where to rest that we stop running! We may as well be where we are!! That is real rest. It is not running to finding a spa retreat somewhere to escape the world of noise and struggle. Peace is never over there. If we need to move to get to Peace we are not at Peace. It is realising that there is no Peace in this world and so no point searching for it that leads us to true Peace. Like the search for Enlightenment, we can't get there by swapping "this" for "that". This and That are both peace and enlightenment if we lose any wish to change from one to the other. Its this realising that anywhere is good to stand that is the foundation of Enlightenment. Jesus died in his own blood and excrement on a cross. Even the worse places in the world have God in them. There is no need to run from anywhere, it is all temporary corporeal existence even sitting on a dream luxury yacht is still standing in this same world of temporary existence. Forget the yacht. Forget over there. We start where we are. That is where God, Peace and Enlightenment reside. We cannot improve anything by moving. And yet if we become bound to here, if we start to like it and don't want to move, then imperceptibly we have grown roots and made it a place we want to stand. This is the very subtle way that the path to Peace and Enlightenment can become tainted and become a trap.

==

So if I uproot from the world and tread only lightly with a mind so wide I can embrace the unconditional will I live forever? Is this immortality? The problem is such a question and conception is still based upon standing with the body or some corporeal conditional thing. Who will live forever? What is there that needs to live forever? Whatever that is, that we want to live forever is just the place where we are standing. Once we no longer stand anywhere then there is nothing we then particularly want to live forever.

It seems crazy. We are so habituated to looking at the the world through our eyes, and living inside this body. Feeding it, listening to its thoughts, acting out its desires and travelling around with it. So habituated to being with it that we come to think we are it. That we stand within it, and its fortunes are our fortunes. Well that is the subtlety. There isn't anywhere else to go. We may as well hang out in this body. But the point is that we don't stand in this body. There is only this body, no one separate that is standing inside it. When we face death it is the body that dies, but because there is no one separate standing in that body there are no foundations shaken by the death. Living forever becomes irrelevant cos there is no entity seeking to stand solidly on anything anyway.

The temptation is always to conjure up some soul or spirit to stand on. That might even be immortal, and if I believe in that and base my belief on that I am safe. But its not helping, its just pampering to the need to stand on something solid. Give up this standing. There is nothing to stand on, and no one in need of a place to stand!

Some pitfalls of Meditation

So I have been meditating on and off for over 20 years and I'm still a beginner! There are many subtle things here that grow more relevant the deeper we get.

(1) Meditate regularly.

Why is this so important. Already blogged but the usual reason we do anything is motivated by the need for something. Often we meditate to over come some barrier, or to feel better, or because we think it will be beneficial to us. This is classic unenlightened thinking because it revolves around a central figure who is commanding the show. This fake phantom does not exist, but it controls our lives all the same. So at the beginning (i.e. for me still after 22 years!) the motivation to meditate is still in someway bound to ego. I want to be more successful, I want to control emotions, I want to feel better, I want to be enlightened. Everyone has to start somewhere, but this is still born from the mistake of ego.

When we meditate regularly our ego will probably fight it. "Do it later, what I want is more important". "It's boring and no fin, serve me and do something more interesting." "You are not a meditator, you are a tough person who needs no help, meditation is for weak people or "spiritual" nuts and hippies". In some way or another the fake self, the small and superficial and actually dead (literally the celluloid hero of our brains) image we have of our true living self will try and derail the meditation.

Meditation is our master that we must submit to. And that sounds like Islam, but its the same point made in Islam and all the religions that to get in sync with reality we first need to get out of sync with the illusion of self. When God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, I believe "He" did not do it so much as they brought it upon themselves by manufacturing an inner self that could now reflect upon itself and so quite happily hide and ignore God - where God is essentially Reality. Mankind has this ability to retreat into fantasy and imagination and create unreal things, and the biggest is this inner belief and faith in a self hidden inside. If meditation does only one thing, it is to bring us out from that inner fantasy world into reality and abandon that inner shadow that we think is a true self.

(2) Meditate for other people

Essentially the same as above, but who are we meditating for? At the start we are meditating for our self. We want the benefits of this mysterious thing. As meditation progresses we aim to lift that grasp we have on it. On one level if I am improved by meditation then so is the world around me. The benefits leak out. When  I would have got angry and hurt someone, no I seek to solve the problem in a more intelligent way that leaves no seeds of resentment or pain that will flourish to create future problems. But ultimately it becomes more clear that meditation benefits everyone and then eventually no one. But not "no one" that the ego might pick and go "ah ha told you waste of time, come back and do what I want" no that is "no one" as in "Ego you are not worth benefitting cos you don't even exist, and neither do all the other egos clamouring for personal attention and benefit, the benefit has been to see that all this daily activity is misguided and serves no one." If anyone is to benefit we first have to get over this fixation on separate individual selves. It always breaks up co-operation and peace. No one will ever be happy when they have only 1 eye that sees them self. That uncomfortable fact for the Ego is that it lives in a world of many selves, most importantly those parent selves which actually created it and without which it wouldn't even exist. Ouch! Take that ego.

So really meditation is for everyone and no one. And least of all our self. However small steps. If it helps motivation to think we are benefitting from meditation then that is not untrue.

* little addendum. In this material world it seems crazy to chant and meditate for other people. What is there is some magical ether that conveys good wishes and benefits to other people even without them doing anything. Well belief in such an ether is no less crazy than belief in a "me" hidden inside this body and mind somewhere**. People in glass houses should not throw stones. We are all crazy who have not yet seen the truth!

** Things are no so simple however. We do not extinguish the self in this move. This is not nihilism we do not throw anything away, we just see it from a different angle. We are there, there is still a self and existence. But the point is that this "presence" this knowledge that "we are alive" Woo Hoo! Party time, this "life" whatever it is, does not come from a hidden thing inside that was born with us and accompanies us that holds our memories, and what we "are" and sits there like a name tag making us different from other people and the world. And which eventually must hit the brick wall of death and then either go smash through to some magical after life or disintegrate into blackness (somehow). That is the fantasy born entirely of our imaginations. The truth exists even for people who have lost their memories. they can sit there and say I have forgotten, so memory for starters is just a tag on to what we are. And we don't spend every moment of every day sitting with our memories. They come and go, we recall them from who knows where. So they are not part of us. And in fact none of that list is party of us. Even our name was given to us by our parents, unless we chose another and that proves that name is stuck on top and not really part of us. And then anyway what was the name of that person before we got a new name? Indeed what was our name before we got a name at all? So even our name is not us. There is nothing that is us! We have no identity, it is all manufactured and stuck on top like a badly fitting coat. The source of all that we call life comes straight out of the Present Moment right now. It doesn't come from a hidden person called "me" or "my life." Rather the other way around. Faced with what is actually a miracle of existence we then grasp around and grab at things, one of which is this self we are given by parents and society and we hold on to that. Its no more than a name badge. And yes its not that important.

So meditation goes far beyond the limits of this small self in this small corner of the world that we like to think of as ours and which we normally grasp onto as all we have. Meditation really encompasses the whole universe and all of existence. But we have to start somewhere so we start with a small self, sitting in its small corner of the universe, with the door closed and the rest all locked out. But we don't need move to access the whole universe, that is both the reality of sitting meditation but also a metaphor of where we start bound to a physical body and self.

p.s. worth watching any desires that want to escape this small self, perhaps the Ego wants to be as big and important as the universe! That was all just metaphor. We already are the universe, it is the ego that makes us small.

== there are more that have occurred to me, I forget for now will update...

Its not just pie they put in those!

2:42 OMG it will take more than a while to get your head around it! "Its not just pie they put in those" is the essence of why the world and we ourselves do not exist... its not just me they put in me! Me is not an ingredient. OMG the man is Buddha.

https://fb.watch/gJfg_PlAxh/

Problems have an inside and outside, Meaning and Puzzle of Life.

 Puzzle:

Milan + Chicago + Venice - Islamabad

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

    Xanadu + Vancouver + Irkutsk

OK made that too easy. But one answer is: Lahore + Xi'an + Ipoh + Xalapa


Which is 69 or LXIX in roman numerals. Realising that Roman Numerals are involved is one obvious key to unlocking the puzzle. 

So to solve this requires 2 separate stages.

(1) Put it in context (the outside)
(2) Process the inside.

The context is to realise that the capital letters of the names map onto Roman Numerals (MCLXVI) which is outside the puzzle. And then we plug that into standard arithmetic displayed in the puzzle (addition, subtraction, division).

OK actually arithmetic is outside the puzzle too. We need map those symbols onto procedures we have drummed into us at school. Or we can enter into a calculator. But once inside its just known steps to complete the task.

So in fact all puzzles have an outside context. They need to be hooked into a context. And once done then the inside "computations" are clockwork.

Take 10+26 = _ That is a piece of pure maths. But unless we are number theorists we'll never look at it alone. It may map onto millimetre distances as we measure something. Once we get the answer 36 we then map it back outside to the context and get 36mm which is useful in the context.

The interesting thing about interesting lateral puzzles is they are deliberately designed to require us to search for a context, to find a "sense". Once this is done the vertical reasoning "inside" is straightforward.

I've noticed this. When people say "its too hard" what they really mean is that they have not established the context properly.

Not particularly useful picture cos the pieces have no picture and are only 2 types, but these puzzles are interesting. Each piece usually contains part of a picture. We can easily look "inside" and see that with no difficulty. The inside is fine. The puzzle exists in finding its place within the whole picture and that requires going outside the piece. We have another clue as well which is the piece shape, but that only relates to the immediate neighbour context. I realise writing this how skilful it is to create a jigsaw. Suppose lots of pieces are the same colour like they are sky. If they are also the same shape then we make the jigsaw really easy. On other hand if lots of pieces which are the same shape have different patterns on them then we make the jigsaw really hard. Anyway the solution is when the pattern inside each piece and the shape of each piece both have a meaningful context.

I look at Wittgenstein's language games here. "Meaning" can be seen with something that is identifiable by itself for example marks on a page like this word "stationery." But those marks have no meaning until they get put in context.

Here are two contexts into which that "stationary" word fits. And suddenly in each "outside" context the "inside" magically gains "meaning."

In general the "inside" has no meaning without an "outside." Obviously the inside must still be there, but it has no meaning.

In meditation we are seeking this meaningless inner state. We distract the running around discursive mind that is always searching for context and meaning. We stick it on watching the breath and we train it like a dog to sit there and be calm. Eventually it lays down and stops running and then we see the man and the pile of papers without a meaning. We no longer apply the word "stationary" to them. Its true he is not moving, and its true that the paper is stationary but we drop this "outside" and just see the "inside" for what it "really" is. Now extraordinary things happen when we stop being "outside." When you drop "inside" to what the thing "really" is you enter a completely different world: one that feels like home! In fact once inside we realise why we always feel like something is missing in life: we are always outside.

Problem with these words "inside" and "outside" is they have context themselves. We probably think:

But actually both these must have an "inside" and an "outside" themselves! There is what they are, and there is the context into which they are found. The outside in this case is the blog discussing the very nature of "inside" and "outside", or "being" and "context" itself. I add something there. I called the "inside" the "being." The inside is what is there: the city names in the puzzle at the start. The outside is how we encode them and give them meaning: which is realising that the starting letters are also Roman Numerals and then we have a simple math puzzle. We can call the inside that has not yet found a context the "Being" while the inside in context, and with meaning, now becomes the "being." Possibly slightly unexpected there are many beings, but one one Being. Before context is applied how can things be more than one! To become many they need be slotted into place. When building a wall any brick will do for the builder adding the next brick, but once its in place that brick has a crucial role holding up the bricks above it and linking with the bricks beside. Before "Being" has been put in place its is anything and everything. That is kind of fudging it, it doesn't sound right. The problem here is that when we speak we are trying to get outside, with Being the moment we get outside and find what it is we are outside. To be inside we must resist going outside and just sit with Being in all its meaninglessness, but all its potential.      

So "inside" and "outside" are much more profound that just the words being used here.

In meditation we can start to discover what "inside" really means. And it is nothing like what we think it is. Problem with thinking it, is that we do that by applying context, which means we are going outside to find out what is inside. This is why I reckon Heideggar ends up with this paradox that "Being is hidden in the process of revealing beings." In order for the discursive mind to investigate "inside" it runs outside to get a "establishing shot." In the sit-com Friends many scenes are filmed on this set.  

But it is standard film etiquette to have an establishing or location shot first so we know "where we are." So we get this shot first before going on to the actual scene.

Its quite natural without an establishing shot to wonder where we are. And in fact whenever we are faced with some "thing" we quickly run "outside" to get a location shot, which in thinking is called the "meaning."

This is no small thing. We spend our whole lives looking for a meaning! We are trying to get "outside" our lives to look in and see "where we are" and "what the bigger picture is" and "how do I fit in to the bigger picture." This entire struggle is actually avoiding "Being" itself. And we can get very anxious and confused when we can't get outside and get our head around things. We start to run (in our heads) trying to find out what is going on, trying to get the establishing shot. That part of the film is not there, it never got films, we haven't missed anything: there is no establishing shot to life. We live in the set, that is all there is! Physicists will spend forever trying to get the Establishing Shot. It is currently Big Band, but that is currently being challenged by JWST and even if it is Big Bang we wonder what the Establishing shot to that is: where did the Big Bang come from? 

As Heideggar notes by the time we have a "thing" the "Being" is obscured. That is by the time we have run outside to see what it is, we are outside and no longer inside!

There must be a story here. A person wakes up in a wonderful hotel room. It has everything they need. It is paradise. But they are troubled cos they have forgotten and don't know where they are. They call up a friend and say this is such a wonderful place, I can't describe how amazing this is, you should come and join me. And the friend says, "well were are you?" And the guy says, I have no idea , I woke up in here (born) and its amazing but I have no idea where "here" is. So his friend says, well go outside and see what street you are on. But, protests the guy I have no key, how will I get back in. And the friend on the phone says, we'll at least you'll know what you are trying to get in to. So the guy in the flat leaves and gets the address which is "Paul" (his name) but then can't get back in.

This is the essence of the problem of mind and life. And perhaps its even what Genesis is about. The snake tricks us into knowledge of good and evil, but in so doing we are no longer in Paradise.

The importance of Meditation really cannot be stressed enough. By forgetting the name of the place we want to go we will end up there. The name of the place is Paradise, but we can only get there by forgetting that. Another story possible there!

Note all the pictures in this blog come in pairs. With meditation and actual Being there is not two or many, there is only One.

Much is spoken in spirituality about The One. To many it is also called God. Not so in Buddhism which removes all tricks really stops us trying to get a location shot. Islam is good in that it bans images and statues so we can't get a picture of God either. Hinduism does it the other way. Give the viewer a million views of God so that they cannot fix on any one. Mahayana Buddhism also does this with the countless Buddhas in all directions. We are all Buddha they say. Buddha was not just a man call Siddhartha Shakyamuni. You can't get "outside" Buddha. Buddha is just the "inside." And when there is not "outside" or "location shot" then all scenes, inner worlds, people, lives blend into One. Paul is actually no different from Joanna. Those words are just the "outside."

So returning to the top. The puzzle of Life can in fact only be solved by stopping trying to solve it. If we ever found a meaning to life, we would actually only have achieved getting outside and losing it. What we "have" that appears to have no meaning is what we truly have. Because to give it meaning will mean getting outside and losing it. If we stop running from the apparently meaningless and just sit with it and go into it then we are entering Life itself. We don't need to know we are sitting in "Central Perk" to have a good time, we don't need to know who we are to have a good life. We don't need answers to the big questions, we don't need Meaning. It doesn't have to make sense. Instead we need to go into it and see what is really there, engage with it, and sit with it. When the names and "beings" drop away then the Being will reveal itself. 

Worrying about Death

Still kind of ancestor season. I heard yesterday of a Buddhist teacher who in the depths of COVID had contacted his master to say he thought he was going to die. The master replied "so what." That contains all the teachings to me. (Well obviously that is master to his student, you wouldn't say that to anyone.) But the point here is that the unconditional mind does not care for the day to day of the conditional. Body and Consciousness are just sounds in the silence. The silence is still there long after they are gone. Worrying about dying is like realising that the music concert will end - obviously in the auditorium at the time that is everything, but in the grand scheme outside it is nothing.

Genital Compatibility vs Homosexuality

The term Homosexuality fails for loads of reasons e.g. its a contradiction anyway, you can't have 1 sex, there must be at least 2 so its a term that already suggests a problem.

To put that another way suppose all men were magically removed from the world, then everyone would be woman and after we had forgotten about men all together then women would forget they were women--as everyone was the same and there was nothing to say here--then there would be no sex (as a noun). Presumably some technology existed to enable women to make babies with other women otherwise in a generation there would be no humans at all. And the activity of women with women to make babies would only be called "sex" historically. But at some time in the future people would wonder what the origins of this word was as relationships using the apparatus of childbirth no longer involved sexes. the only constant as technology evolves is that 2 copies of the DNA will be needed to make a new human.

So what actual is the issue with Homosexuality (if there is one)? It is Genetical Compatibility isn't it. Sexes come in two types that fit together literally like a lock and key. So sexual relationships work because of genetical compatibility. The problems occur when there is incompatibility. This may be due to same sex attraction, but it can be due to deformity or injury. Heterosexual couples who experience damage to their genitals can be thrown into the problems at Homosexual couples. And if one partner if Transgender then this only becomes a problem if the transgender operation changes their genital arrangement.

So rather than focus on "sexual attraction" perhaps we can just ignore this, and make it a medical issue of Genital Compatibility.

One reason for changing the thinking comes from the Law. All parts of the world consider anal-sex a perversion and there are rules against it. Only with liberal changes to law in the West very recently has this changed. Even Buddhism, which is famously about peace and compassion, says that anal-sex is to be avoided. I wonder whether was in termed as "anti-gay" is really just "anti anal sex."

What do the clerics in Qatar say to "homosexual" relationships that exclude the possibility of anal sex? #TODO find out what Muhammad actually said about this.

Anyway pretty sure there are a number of issues here that the LGBT community have crudely just lumped together as prejudice.

But if we focus instead on this issue of Genital Compatibility then we have an actual definable issue. Even homosexuals must find a solution to incompatibility.

Now it is argued that the anus has a lot of unnecessary sensory and pleasure receptors that can only be there is the anus had evolved as a pleasure organ. Indeed why ban something that is unpleasant. We don't need to ban hard work, or standing out in the cold because we are not overly attracted to these things. There must be attraction to anal sex for it to be banned. But on the other hand if its pleasurable then why ban it? It's not like we ban eating good food.

And this raises questions about the nature of pleasure and sexual relationships. Obviously sexual activity evolved from procreation. All the organs and processes have a role to play in pregnancy and conception. But sex plays a much more complex role in human society, especially Modern Western society. But its played a role in religious festivals and entertainment and has a wide presence on cultures around the world. It is clearly more than even binary relationships. Modern post-Christian society still focuses on sex between partners and with the advent of Gay-Marriage the gay community focuses more and more on what they previously termed Conservative and Bigoted: the binary partnership.

Anyway big subject just dumping some ideas.

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So why the story of Sodom and Gomorrah? What was the deal traditionally with anal sex, well and unrestricted sex?

One theory is disease. The reason for strict traditional sexual structures is to stop the spread of STDs. To back this up is the observation than on Polynesian islands where there was no disease, sailors reported free love. Once Western sailors brought disease naturally the culture changed to stop the spread of disease. You see this in animals. Monogamy in animals can be seen as a way to sto the spread of diseases. Birds who travel far and could produce global pandemics are very often incredibly monogamous sticking with the same partner throughout their life, and even stopping breeding if that partner dies so strong is the instinct **. Obviously there is no moral or religious restriction here, it is what they do without question. This would explain why promiscuous people are viewed as "dirty." They literally may be carrying disease.

** Update 8 Nov 2022 this study suggests that if this is true it is over ridden by the need to mate. Long distance migrants are also more likely to mis-time breeding, and so more likely to change partner.

Another reason analysed at length (and I can't say theory because I don't know if its in the literature but from my own observations and thinking) is that men do not want children with unfaithful women who may bear them someone else's children. This is more than ego, in Capitalist societies men do not want other men laying claim to their capital. But genetically its the instinct to further your own genes (in Neo-Darwinism any gene that does not in some way promote its own survival gets lost). As a result men will be allowed much more promiscuous behaviour than women in Capitalist society, which is what we actually saw until WW2 and women starting to abandon child care for paid labour. Now that women bring in a large part, even larger part of a families income the wife does not care whether she is looking after the husbands children or not. If he doesn't like it then leave, she can afford it herself. From his perspective however he doesn't want to give money to another man's children so his investment in the family is reduced, or even extinguished and he has no reason to stay around. I believe you see this a lot more in Caribbean families where traditionally women are strong and unfaithful, and men therefore have no loyalty to the family. Female faithfulness is key to male loyalty. Which is why if the male cheats it is so devastating to the female because she has made this sacrifice to keep him (presumably for the money to support the family). On the other hand though, if she cheats he will lose interest in supporting the family as he can no longer be sure they are his children. DNA tests solve this, and there should be law to make DNA testing a legal requirement if the male has doubts. Marriage is obviously intimately linked to all this, which is why Gay Marriage makes literally no sense traditionally. But what has made it meaningful is the possibility of surrogates and technology. Now gay couples can "sort of" have their own children and so sort of have "families." I started off with Genital Incompatibility as a concept but really this has only evolved because of the really fundamental dynamics of "making new humans."

Quick biology lesson. Humans are Diploid which means they have 2 copies of the DNA. To make a new human traditionally you take 1 copy from one partner and 1 copy from the other. This is the very reason why there are 2 sexes. Its then the reason those sexes "go together" and why there must be genetical compatibility. This is the underpinning of the whole structure.

If HomoSexuals wish to take part in this process of forming families and children we await the day when a mechanism is created to enable one DNA copy to come from 1 gay parent and 1 from the other.

But its worse than this because parents are not equal. One parent must supply the cell for the new DNA. This is called the egg in animals, but all organisms through the multi cellular kingdoms do this. So one sex creates large cells for the new DNA and the other creates mobile carriers for the DNA so that it can find and unite with the other copy. That microscopic process is then played out in the macroscopic world with dating sites, people looking for each other and romantic tragedy like Romeo and Juliet. When Sophocles wrote The Symposium about love isn't it amazing that one of the ideas is the myth of gods breaking humans into two halves which must search for each other. This fundamental structure that we all familiar with, reflects the deeper microscopic dynamics of making new humans, indeed all plants and animal. This is why there are 2 sexes and why partnerships involve 2, and why they are different with one more involved in the creation of new people (the egg carrier) than the other (the mobile gamete producer). And given that each sex has a different role you need opposite sexes to be genitally compatible, but same sexes to be incompatible, which is why 95% of the population is heterosexual an seek opposite genitals in their sexual relationships. For breeding success in any organism you do not want incorrect sexes mating, that is not productive, and so you make it impossible for homosexual partners to actually copulate forcing them into heterosexual partnership.

A section here on genital compatibility in the animal kingdom. Mammals can actually have sex with each other. This is called bestiality in humans. Given what has been said why are we not genitally incompatible with other animals? Well the assumption is its easy to tell a human partner even from our nearest relative the chimpanzee. There is no chance of mistake. But in the animal world not so. Lots of insects deliberately look like each other for camouflage or mimicry. A testament to the importance of not wasting your reproductive time and energy is the huge array of variation that exists in colouration in insects. And even more important the huge array of genital types that stops breeding between the wrong species. When identifying insects the real test used by experts is analysis of the genitals. Most insect species in fact come in groups that are so similar you need to study genital compatibility. But with visible features male insects particularly come in all kinds of colours the butterflies most famously. They are literally like flying flowers. Flowers are actually highly attractive to attract insects that are used as pollinators. Male insects however are highly attractive to both attract mates but also attract the correct mates. And there can be Sexy Son Hypothesis at work and similar dynamics so that males actually become ungainly and flamboyant to prove their general health. Females it is argued evolve to be more attracted to these crazy males because it means their female offspring--once they have shed the male's absurd features--will be much stronger. Because males serve only one job of moving the sperm around, actually most of the actual hard work and practical dynamics falls on females. You can almost see this in human society where, especially today in West, males get criticised by females for not be practical for messing around with sports and abstract past-times, while the women are actually much more concerned with the real world dynamics of friends, family, house and child management. Anyway males and females have completely different gametes and as a result end up with completely different roles and so it is essential for them to have different genitals to ensure no mix ups.

Now with everything said there is no actual reason why you could not have a genital arrangement which there is a mutual exchange of DNA. You see this a lot in nature like with worms and molluscs. After "sex" having exchanged sperm, both individuals create eggs. The idea of "sex" doesn't work here because both functions are performed by both partners. However note that it still requires 2 as each partner needs another half to make eggs.

Why can't we just copy our own DNA and have children with no partner? Or alternatively have genitals that enable us to have sex with our self? In fact this happens in nature. Many plants can self-fertilise and many organisms like aphids can clone themselves. Why is it not widespread? Well this is the question of why sex evolved in the first place. Given how much time is spent finding a partner and merging DNA why do it at all? Sex evolved a very long time ago, about 1 billion years ago at current estimates. That is at the very start of life on Earth (by current estimates). That is to say evidence of genitals and sexual differences is visible in fossils from basically the start. It must be important. The prevailing theory is the reason that incest is outlawed. The children of brothers and sisters mating have much higher incidence of disease. The reason is linked to why we have 2 copies of the DNA at all. Often there are mistakes and genes get corrupted. If you have sex with yourself you are duplicating these same errors and so both sides of the DNA have them and they get far worse. It also means that once a bad gene occurs in the family there is no way out. Sex it is suggested evolved to keep mixing genes. This enables families to get new genes in and get rid of bad genes. Since absolutely all organisms do this even bacteria it is clearly very important. So another reason that sexes have incompatible genitals is actually to stop breeding with the self. The closest you can get with our genital arrangement is to breed with siblings, which is outlawed cos it is not a good way to make children. But if we were truly homosexual that would be outlawed anyway as the offspring would be mutants.

Now If a culture allows homosexual partnership then the genes for homosexuality stop being passed on as they cannot have children and this marks the end of the homosexuality!  Indeed liberalism is the death knell of homosexuality. In pervious cultures where gays were forced into traditional relationships they could pass on their genes!

So why homosexuality at all? Prisons are full of people with polyploidy and two Y chromosomes. It seems the Y chromosome makes you violent. One argument is that genes to counter this also lead sometimes to homosexuality. Not sure if proven, but just an example of one genetic argument.

But times are changing and the technology will soon be available where one lesbian partner can artificially fertilise her partners eggs. And more problematic but possible the DNA from an egg can be replaced with fertilised DNA of two gay partners and the placed in a surrogate. It seems a lot of work just to meet the desires of partners and their particular "sexual attraction" but this is the modern culture where getting what you desire and want is everything (not saying that is a bad thing--except Flowers from Dhammapada suggests problems--but times have changed and before it was not like this).

But why after all this is anal-sex so frowned upon? Time up ... TBC

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No idea why anal-sex is outlawed yet. But instead a reason why it shouldn't. Our closest animal cousins are the chimpanzees and famously there are 2 species. The familiar ones, but also the Bonobo. Bonobo society is matriarchal and sex plays a central role in social bonding. It means that all males have sexual intercourse with both other males and females and clearly for reasons beyond procreation. Do this suggest that sex in humans like with Polynesian culture could play a role in social bonding and grooming and in fact, if Polynesian culture is to go by, if there was no chance of passing on disease it would be? However the other feature of Polynesian culture was that it was Socialist and not Capitalist. There was shared ownership and society was organised around the community. In Capitalist societies where there is private ownership, people naturally want to limit children so that the capital stays in the family. This for instance is why Aristocratic society often breeds cousin so that the family titles and wealth remain close, and why Aristocrats are often inbred and show signs of genetic illness.

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Lesbanism was never made illegal in the UK. In fact there has never been any legislation regarding lesbians. Lesbians are and have always been free in the UK. The only restrictions have been on Male Homosexuality and in particular anal sex. So this very much underlines the global problem with Homosexuality that it is not male/male interest but the fact that male homosexuals have a tendency to take part in anal sex. It is Anal Sex that is outlawed both in Homo and Hetero-sexuals. This goes back to Jewish Law and is the Law across the world since the dawn of time.

So the LGBT community has rather misinterpreted history and rather misunderstood the problem. If they were the agree to avoid Anal Sex like the Heterosexual community then there never was problem.

In 1989 Anal Sex was made legal in the UK as part of of the Poll Tax bill and this was actually the great change in legislation that over turned the entire history of the human race. Gay Marriage and Gay Rights are just secondary things, and actually don't even apply to Lesbians who never had reduced Rights.

This does rather suggest that its only one particular genital compatibility that was at issue and that was sex involved two penes, but only when it included the anus.