My Mother...

...is the latest on my hit list of idiots. Well she has always been but it's as far as it can go now. She is on the verge of a mental breakdown which is obvious when you see how her brain works. Worst of all she won't listen but instead uses her many years to talk infinitely (not allowing anything in). I don't know much myself but I can see she has made some massive errors in her mind. Not wishing to detail much of the insanity but for future reference here is an example very like the bike situation. She spends many hours a day turning off electric lights and berrating people in the house for leaving them on or having more than 1 swtitched on at a time. She is not wrong here in terms of enviornment - I try to use as much solar as I can. The problem tho is her argument is to do with money and I have suggested better ways of saving money. A 100W bulb uses 1kW every 10 hours which cost 10p - that is 24p a day and £88 to leave on all year. We have energy saving so that is £18 to power all day, every day for a year. Now she simply isn't interested in doing the maths she just wants to wander around the house being busy and lecturing. Maybe this is one origin of my campaign against busi(y)ness? Altho really I know it lies in the environment and Nature.

However at the same time as she wants money for the upkeep of the house she refused last weekend to let me take a tree down preferring to hire a tree feller at £200+. For a morning's work I consider that a lot of money but in my mother's head that is worth less than a 100W equivalent light bulb on every day for 11 years! What can one do? And I remember now the real problem is that no matter how much I go along happily with her idiotic requests she considers me unhelpful because I don't do what she wants when she wants it. It seems that executing her orders, giving her the sense of control is the point here: nothing practical at all. Arguing this now I see the problem :-) My bosses had the same attitude: regardless how idiotic, they simply want the sense of control. Famous example was my lab boss being ordered by the MD to clean out the bins a few hours before they were due to be emptied anyway and right at the critical point of the week where orders had to be completed. My bosses failure to agree with this was mentioned at every appraisal for quite a few years! I feel that the problem at the temple might have been the same. The Abbess said I was egotistical. This I interpreted after a lot of thought was not what it seemed but rather meant I was not respectful of her ego. So my mother, bosses and temple at least seem to have one root: the desire for control of people. Unfortunatly I'm not the sort of person who can be controlled - it feels like death to me, a prison, a dark hole where the sun doesn't shine. Who wants to be emprisoned by someone for no reason? So its not a part of any contract I sign "being controlled". That is always for the other person to negotiate with themselves - I hold the mirror up instinctively.

Maybe this explains the bike situation too. She did say that I would never buy the bike myself - so she spent the money she owed me on what she wanted me to buy. Basically she was controlling me.

Wow hallelulah. All this makes a bit more sense now. The "idiots" are people who are trying to control me. I'm not that fussed if my mother has a nervous break-down. She had it coming from day 1 the way she has been brought up and the things she believes. It is quite natural. The problem arises when she suddenly feels that she needs me. Then as she grasps for control in her world it follows that she grasps for control of me... or the sense at least that I am controllable... "reliable" I remember she called it. So my mistake is to think that she needs things being done - of which, I pointed out to her, I have never failed her. What she sees however is not that I execute her "orders" and always get the job done well, but that I do not execute "her" orders. Which is true. I always make a job my own. As argued before here if I can't make a job my own I don't do it. It was failure to think about what they were doing and take responsibility for it that led to the Nazi atrocities - you can't take orders and make it your own at the same time. This is where friction then occurs with bosses - I do what I am paid to do, but i don't do what I am told: they are different. I've always considered the latter unprofessional - but maybe this is the subtext most of the time.

OK so I understand now, and unfortunately realise that this is just the way it is. I don't take orders. Anyone who wants their orders followed needs to find someone else, or do it themselves as I have always maintained. Which is kind of where the argument ended with my mother anyway. I simply can't be the son she wants or even needs. Where do you go after that! Sadly her way of thinking looks like its heading for a brick wall which is going to he hard on everyone my sister most. Ironic since she is the one who can't accept my way of thinking and always says it will end in my ruin. What I see now is that my way of thinking doesn't give her the security and control that her way of thinking needs, my way of thinking will end in her ruin! No wonder human relationships gets so self destructive. I will have to think about how we can both survive when she is demanding of me my opposite and my way of simply living my life is actual perceived as a treat to hers! For now I'm on holiday and I said to her I wasn't coming back and she was no mother of mine anymore. That should gain her infinite distance from the troubles that she sees in me. What might have been a mis-calculation in retrospect was that this was all kicked off because she was off to the funeral of a friend of hers (about the 10th who has died of cancer). I've pointed out to her that at her age death is something she has to face - yet she persists in her quaint worldly thinking and just seems to dig herself deeper and deeper into depression. Why she is so beligerent and determined to keep up a show for the Jones (whoever they are) and not face the realities of life is beyond me. It is a lesson never to follow the crowd, the Jones or the hegemony because when you need them they aren't there for you - because they never existed! People like me who are there for my mother are considered demons because we don't follow the Jones and so can't offer the "support". While this is unpacked the critical issue is jobs - my mother considers it an embarrassment and a liability that I don't work while all my friends have top careers. There is certainly no talking to her about this when she won't even listen to simple things. Really at this point the road splits she must run with what she has got and me with what I have got. True she nurtured me as a child, but trying to keep the umbilical attached so that she can suck it all back out is not the way it works. Parents ultimately do die and she must face this.

===

Update on the above. It is highly ironic that I should be turning my back on her when she needs me most! How I get caught in these mirrors and reflections is as much a mystery as the irony itself. After cooling off I realised that I have no choice but to support her. There will be a pantomime of me feigning obsequiousness even where I know it will achieve nothing but her security. Why I can't graciously accept my position is that it makes a mockery of the belief that there is a "true" way. Obey my mother and accept her way of doing things when not only does it violate my own way, but I think her way is counter productive. By accepting her way I become an instrument to the very problem I am being asked to give assistance in. It is just something to avoid; yet I am her son and this binds me to the world in a way that I can't escape.

One thing I am learning through all this is that, particularly in human relationships: you never get a clear shot at the target. Like eons of folding, weathering and deposition, and intrusions the geology of human relationships is never the right way up (if you forgive the analogy). Sometimes layers of rock are turning upside down, folded and twisted so they point in almost any direction, and then faults cut through the mass and it is folded and twisted again... and again. It creates a Rubic cube of rock where without other clued it is impossible to find out where we started. So too with the affairs of people and the world, unweaving the mess is virtually impossible. Just look at how in just two centuries of involvement in the Middle-East and Afghanistan, of twisting allegiances and reversing political alignment, the West is so embedded that they can no longer even remember how it all started let alone how it is going to end.

So it is Peace with my mum in her frailty. Peace may not it turns out be based on Truth or hope of Resolution at all, but maybe just Peace itself and acceptance that the absurdity and counter-production of the ever-twisting-topsy-turvy-through-a-looking-glass world is just the way it will always be until death do us all part.

===

That said it occurred to me that this is already what I do in every situation. Faced with the "idiot" you cannot reason with them, they will not listen so you have no choice but to just accept things the way they are for the sake of peace. But this does not rest easy in my mind. If we are to just accept inaccuracy, idiocy, falsity without concern then how do we at the same time treat these things within ourself with concern? Once we are trained to just accept idiocy then what i find happening is that our mind has no choice but to become idiotic itself. Thus I find that the tolerance phase is short lived and very soon I have to exit the situation - that being temple, my muse, work, relationships, my mum? It is the problem that the computer HAL9000 had in the story of "2001" (odd now I think about it that my dad would have seen that film for decades and never known that it was to be the year he would die - I wonder how many times I've considered the year that will tun out to be my last). The machine has two competing rules: 1) not to harm people, and (2) not to jeopardise the mission. The conflict between these leads the "rational" machine into quite irrational behavior... a non-logical emergent property arising out of logic - maybe a suggestion of how emotions might occur in machines... which after Sartre makes sense as emotions are "magical" events which shift our mind from one state to another without any justification. Anyway the real world I'm discovering does seem to be multifaceted and people seem to revel in playing the many sides; not to harmonise and "mend" the whole but rather to lever the world apart so they can set the bits against one another for their own purposes. Trying to operate in such a fractured environment creates either apathy or mental illness... or if you are me you just walk away. This does seem my only strategy which works. Thing is I can't really walk away from my mother tho I can probably distance myself from her.

Mum will be sent mad by exactly the analysis above. She is programmed with love for me, but also programmed by her upbringing to be unable to handle my indifference to the social norms - in particular having a job. She will blow herself apart trying to marry two opposing instructions. Just writing here is it possible that she finds me an idiot then for sending two of her directives into contradiction? Shall have to consider this more.

The problem then is not as simple as I have tried to make it over the past decade or so. Faced with a contradiction we do have a serious problem then which threatens to blow us apart unless we walk away... at least that is the only solution I have found yet. Run away, live to fight another day! It is certainly not good enough to naively ignore it and try to remain peaceful and undisturbed!

== Update in 2019

My mother got a dementia diagnosis a few years ago. Having learned about dementia I discovered that she was not deliberately being hostile to me, but that she was struggling with personality changes, anxieties and confusion. It was typical of myself then to (1) assume everything was directed to myself - that is my ego (2) to assume that everything was a matter of thinking correctly - this is also ego in fact. So both my mother and myself have been on a long journey since this post and now as she declines and slowly shuts down and goes to sleep we have a good relationship of support and mutual love, and it is a chance for me to return all her care and nurture that she gave to me over all those years when I was young. The cycle of life continues forever.

Discovery or Making?

This is one of the oldest topics I ever looked at and it still looks wooly. Just quickly tying in some of the posts already gone (from memory no time to reference)...

The issue of the ""If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it really fall?" which I didn't know but according to Wikipedia is attributed to Berkley has a parallel in Zen "what is the sound of one hand clapping?". To me there are two meanings to this. One is rational - it is the point, essential to Buddhism, that nothing exists by itself but is instead the product of causes and conditions. A single hand cannot clap because neither can two hands. It is only in the relationship of the hands in a clap that we get a sound. Thus we see that nothing by itself ever did anything, and more importantly nothing by itself "is" anything! Apply that to ourself and we have the essence of liveration.
The other way I can see to look at this is identical. The answer is NULL. Heavily discussed already NULL is an entity from computer data processing and means "not relevant". An example would be in a questionnaire where some questions were not answered - you need a meta-language to mean that the value entered is not a response to the questionnaire. Even if you added an option to the questions "respondee didn't answer" what if the questioner missed the question all together? NULL means that "within the context there is no valid answer". NULL is treated as an irrelevant ghost but it was handled in previous posts as more valuable even that answers within the context!
The answer to Berkleys question is NULL because effectively he is asking what is the answer if no-one records it. Which is the same as realising that it requires "two to tango" - which is the more romantic version of the Zen koan and which I did once want to explore myself - but you find someone who is interested in relationships in a trans-egotistical way (women want babies completely different agenda!). Anyway there are friends and society instead :-) As Buddha reminded Ananda the spiritual path is all about spiritual relationships (when Ananda suggested it was half private and half public).

The crude answer then to the question about whether Godel discovered or made the Incompleteness Theorems is NULL. This is not a trivial or unsatisfactory answer but exact. The point is to understand that these types of questions are pushing outside the framework of Reality that we are habituated to. The idea that there is a meta level that informs even the most solid worldly constructs is a bit of a Matrix like revelation. This is what the SIH is trying to prove - the God or Horatio Principle as I think I monikered it once. By way of analogy there is Cantors infinite infinities... each infinity implying a greater infinity. So the SIH means that every self ()existing entity) implies an other.

Vague thoughts after the tennis

Watching Isnet and Mahut today complete 10 hours of tennis and still not find a resolution pushed me to think about the SRH. It was being discussed by McEnroe that tennis might have to change its rules... ah ha I thought...

It seems that in any system of rules there is always the white elephant which pushes the system beyond what was meaningful. Is this like a reverse Godel? He says that there are statements that are grammatical but can'tbe proved while here we have a situation that is proven in the sense that it has been arrived at by playing out the rules yet it no longer has any meaning. The logic is just to keep applying the rules (i.e. a new game until one of the players goes 2 ahead) but it has entered territory that no-one has ever seen before, or even ever thought about before, and terrtory that everyone is convinced will never be trod again.

On one hand nothing is happening at all - unless you accept the rules and the meaning and value that has been arrived at by accepting those rules.

On the other once rules are accepted the game has been pushed outside the envelope ever imagined in the 137 years since tennis was invented. This is almost a Turing Halting problem because conceivably there is a tennis game that never ends. This possibility means that tennis is flawed altho in reality this game is extremely unlikely to happen.

Now for the SRH it would be great if there was some kind of reason why all games will always have their achilles heel... some kind of paradox that means that all systems of rules are incomplete. Godel showed that some kind of Godel numbering was required before his paradox could be constructed. But aren't there an infinite number of possible isomorphism - most not so meaningful and anthropocentric as Godel's - which can play havoc with systems? What is the limit to isomorphism?

Just as few vague thoughts after the tennis.

On Value, freedom and SRH / SIH

This seems very easy today...

Value is exactly isomorphic with Meaning. Borrowing from Wittgensteins analysis of meaning:

Something gains value when someone finds a "game" to play with it. Thus a stone has no value until this particular type of stone becomes part of system of rules (or a game). It thus gains meaning at exactly the same time.

Previously value was given some intrinsic nature so that for example a piece of music by Mozart was actually valuable in itself. To a chameleon lizard the value might be something under which to hide, or as happens in lots of Buddhist stories, the manuscript might provide urgent tinder for a fire. The point is that there is no intrinsic "value" or "meaning" because there is no self-defined system of rules on how to play with it. The idea of intrinsic value equates then with the notion that objects come with instruction sheets on how they are to be extraneously interpreted. On one hand there must be a relationship between an object and its environment - a metal ball is going to end up in different games to a sheet of original Mozart score - but on the other hand the environment is not entirely dictated by the qualities of an object. The first hand leads to ideas of intrinsic worth, respect and obedience of objects while the other hand leads to freedom and liberation.

This last bit needs clarification. An individual who does not see intrinsic value in something like a sheet of original Mozart score may feel that they have complete entitlement to do whatever they want with it. The problem however is that, at the same time, they lose any appeal to intrinsic value they had and so must accept the environment treating them with alterity (as a complete outsider, stranger and other) also. This would be true origin of Durkheim's alienation rather than anything intrinsic to society - altho Membership itself (as analysed in depth before) arises from ego. This is the crisis of ego - where we demand some freedom over our environment and then find to our distress the environment taking liberties with us. Bentham and Mill famously resolved this by defining freedom as long as it didn't upset the freedom of others - but everything is interconnected so it doesn't work... and what of someone who buys the works of Mozart and then burns them all for firewood - isn't that affecting the freedom of others? It doesn't work. I lamented the neighbour who cut down the lovely cherry tree that I had admired throughout my childhood and had memories of falling in love under one peaceful halcyon summer - they sold the house again just as quickly for a trivial profit. There is no way of establishing value that doesn't have winners and losers. My personal solution is to appreciate everything the way it is and only change it only if you absolutely have to and can see it being broadly beneficial to others apart from oneself... but that is because I appreciate Nature of which there is still stuff to write I know...

So if we let go the idea of intrinsic value we must be careful not to use it as a reason for alterity (absolute otherness) because that is where Karma comes in and we end up suffering due to the freedom of the world that I will call libertas alius (the freedom of the other) as opposed to libertas mei (my freedom) - forgive my poor Latin I hated!! it at school. These two freedoms are sides of the same coin, which those bound within the paradigm of ego (like myself) can't see.

It is therefore a requirement of the world that we do not treat it with alterity, as a stranger or as a less being. But the achievement in this post is to derive this without postulating the existence of something material within an object that instructs us to behave with respect. Value then arises as an implication of a greater structure which is the identity of libertas alius and libertas mei - isomorphic with tat tvam asi (tho which is art) in Sanskrit. Which is all just another way of saying that we cannot take ourselves to be separate from the world - No man is an island entire of itself etc [John Donne, Meditation 17].

Turning to the SRH if we were to somehow to be separate from the world by what mechanism would that separation exist? Isomorphic with the example circle in the post on SRH, the rules that define the set of points in a circle are not themselves within the R^2 euclidean plane. An isomorphism between the R2 and set constructor logic - so that each point (x,y) represented a sentence in logic (would have to be modulus(R2) because R2 has more points than logic has sentences) - would enable a set to define points that fell within "itself"... ok I'm spinning off the point of "value" for a bit to explore down this SRH path... so actually there is always a way of getting things to fall within themselves via isomorphism... make tea...think about next bit... but as already commented in prev. posts the isomorphism can only be established inter alia (between others) one cannot establish an isomorphism between oneself and another - this might be the essence of the SRH! So maybe it isn't to do with reference but rather isomorphism the self-isomorphic hypothesis. So what is the reason for the SIH. Rather than deal with an isomorphism like Godel Numbering (which I don't fully understand yet) I'll deal with encoded thing for computer. Bit sequences have a strong long established isomorphism with numbers which makes bit sequences easier to think about. When something is put on computer it is essentially converted into a number. Now if the SIH was false and self-isomorphism was possible (particularly in the case of establishing isomorphism between oneself and another) then it would mean that there was a computer program (a number) which could decode itself to become the thing which was encoded. An example:

A temperature transducer and AD (analogue-digital converter) converts the temperature into a bit sequence which is sent to a computer serial bus. A computer program has been written to get that number and plot it on the screen for someone to monitor. Famously the computer is just a dummy agent - it has no idea what it is doing. It is John Searle's Chinese Room argument against A.I. Now the user and programmer are the ones who are establishing the isomorphism between the temperature and the plot on the screen and also the bit data and the transducer's voltage... OK I am correcting myself... no they are not establishing the isomorphism! It is already there: they are discovering it! The shifts in thermistor resistance have always followed the temperature it was discovering the correspondence which led to electronic thermometers which came to have the same "meaning" and "value" as mercury ones because they could take part in the same games. Interestingly I'm at the Constructivism cross-roads again...

OK here is an important recurring point. The MIT lecture raised this question: what if Godel had never "discovered" his numbering and shown the flaws in mathematical logic. Would maths have sailed on happily unawares of the deep cracks? Godel Numbering is thus like a telescope. Without it you cannot see the parallels between numbers and logic. Without it you cannot construct the Incompleteness theorems. It is instrumental. Without deep space telescopes there are things we know about that would have been forever hidden. Occam's Razor (highly unsatisfactory) is used to strip away that which we don't need. I was always puzzled by Popper's "falsification". The example given college was: which is the best hypothesis (i) "there are vultures in Hyde Park" or (ii) "There are no vultures in Hyde Park" - I was alone in getting it wrong, through stupidity I think, but on reflection I never fully understood why. We go in search of vultures. There is no result until we find a vulture which proves hypothesis i true and hypothesis ii false. So you can prove something true. I think the point was that on available evidence we form the hypothesis that there are no vultures, but then it can only be proven false. And, that is based upon Occam's Razor that we don't create hypotheses that are useless because that leads to an unmanageable number of hypotheses. However evolution works the other way but creating hypothesis and just seeing if it works - so I may indeed live as though there are vultures in Hyde Park and it might just work! Popper was far too logical and analytical! But back to the point "available evidence" points to a "reality" which is limited to what we know now rather than what "really exists". What is the sound of a tree falling in a deep forest? Do things exist when no-one is looking at them? I think I answered these but can't remember or find the post. It seems that actually both are inadequate. Isn't the answer going to be a dialectic? The incompleteness Theorems neither exists without Godel Numbering nor entirely because of it. Is it fair to say that Godel Numbering exists equally because of deep implications of the incompleteness theorems?

Turning back to the computer the computer doesn't know that the graph it mechanically plots corresponds to the temperature - it has only data coming in which could be from anywhere. The user makes the link between the graph and the temperature. But even if the user wasn't there the computer would still produce a graph which correlated with temperature, just as fossil tree rings recorded growth rates long before anyone linked them to climate.... blimey the going has got tough... I'm pulling out and will return to this point. What is interesting to note is that "my mind has changed" and I now see Godel and the SIH in terms of discovering already existing entities while before I was thinking in terms of Godel actually creating the Isomorphism with his numbering tool. My ideas have changed! Have I discovered something or have I made something ;-)

Back to Value. I now side here with the Structuralists and Capitalists now and no longer with Pirsig (and the Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle maintenance) etc.

This fits with the previous analysis which eliminated the distinction between "need" and "want". People, it was observed, will quite happily die for their country which places status and membership higher even that life itself. Quite extraordinary but true.

However exchange value isn't everything because there is never-the-less the perceived relative value that a human agent experiences in a particular situation. It is the existential quality of value (and meaning) that causes such discomfort with Capitalism. Being told that the market value of an ordinary house is £250,000 is stretching its price beyond its value ... but because we live in a society which has only one game here and that includes houses the value is going to be potentially infinite ... except you can live in garages and tents and even "rough" like a lot of people still chose so there are many other games to play and much value to find in things seemingly worthless.

It is this possibility that the absolutely worthless can become completely valuable which struck home today. Oil must have been worthless at some stage, as was uranium. One wonders what is worthless today that will find its game one day.

Now is it dangerous to relativise Nature? Can Nature become worthless? There is something still to say about Nature will return to this one day.

Bootstrapping

Plan to start holiday at Stonehenge last night ditched. Still fitting a bike rack, waiting for new bank cards after blitzing my identity last week, and some apathy. Still up at 4am this morning and watched the sun rise (just broke from clouds at 5am) from Knole Park. Nothing amazing, just peaceful. Am beginning to find peace and not strive so hard for what famously (as retold by Coello) is with us anyway. The greatest day is the day we can just sit with ourself. Maybe it is old age dawning slowly within me but I'm beginning to see this.

Just setting up dual booting on the replacement computer I discover that the term derives from the saying "pulling oneself up by the boot straps". That book "The Self-Writing Universe" by Phil Scanlan becomes relevant again - this is what he was talking about. A boot-strap it turns out works by running the smallest program possible which loads a second program and a cascade begins which eventually loads the OS, and the GUI these days, and then an application, managed by the OS, and you have the machine that we, the user, want to use (be that Word or Excel etc). Now the question arises for a universe what started that? And whatever that is what started that? This is the question Phil is persuing and something that has intrigued me also.

But this conundrum only works if you are outside the system looking in. One can only say "what started that?" from a stand-point apart from that. But how could anyone be outside the universe? We are thus necessarily "inside" and inseparable from to the very thing which we are enquiring about. This is the Anthropogenic Principle. It is also I see the Horatio Principle (see blog) and maybe the essence of the SRH. Thus inside the Universe there is no meaning to "start". Until we find a place to stand "outside" the universe then "starting" is not a meaningful term.

This is what arose in the meditation on Metamorphosis in Humans I was having when my computer was stolen... relevant? Death (loss) can strike at any time. It is thus parallel to the unfolding of immanent time which we notice in things like metamorphosis. Death comes like an interrupt on a chip process. I believe that interupts are a set of pre-wired instructions that force a chip to store its state and begin executing a different set of code. The process that is being executed will never know that it has been interrupted because like someone in a coma when it starts executing again it is just the next instruction with no reference to the time "in between". The relationship between steps in the code, like the relationship between points in the circle examples (previous blog), are not coded within the code - if they were then the relationship between those parts wouldn't be coded ad infinitum. So the argument went Death is not a part of the metamorphosis on a human. Now if stopping isn't then symettrically then starting isn't either. I don't remember my conception anymore than Physicists can find any evidence for the actual cause of the universe. "My Life", that things which unfolds from day to day, occurs in a different stream of meaning to my conception and my death. Death isn't at the end of the road, and my birth wasn't at the start. Science will try and extend life further and further, maybe we will be able to live forever. Death is thus being pushed away from this stream. Yet a car accident, cancer or heart attack will interrupt the stream and start executing a completely different stream. We all know that experience of being interrupted by something serious and what was so important yesterday suddenly is no longer relevant. The stream changes.

Now birth is the opposite of being interrupted. I can't think of a concept that conforms to this. Will make some tea now and have a think. Failing that I will make a word up... or did I already? What was that latin word for "in the beginning"... can't find it... it is related to the concept of ex nihilo however the sense as creation starts that it came from nothing. Like diving into the sea, the fish who know nothing about the land and the air must think that humans come ex nihilo, out of nothing. Where the analogy fails Buddhism picks up because in reality no pre-existing human (or soul) dives into birth, rather the diver only has the perspective of the fish. Just like birth then death is also in to nothing. This is the NULL I was speaking about in previous blogs. It seems that it is a "category" issue to borrow from Gilbert Ryle, but one that is written into the fabric of the universe... so maybe there is life in Russel and Whiteheads "theory of types" in that categories seem to exclude one another in reality. When one tries to access something that has jumped categories you get a NULL. I think about "my muse" who has died and it gives me a NULL. I trace my life back to before it started and I get a NULL. Now if I jump categories and speak of things materially then I have answers to both, but if we are honest knowing that I came from fusion of a cell in my mothers body with a cell from by fathers body really doesn't help me much beyond getting marks in exams. These facts are stratospheric compared with the ordinary things of my daily world. It is like thinking about the 60s and Englanding winning the world cup in 1966. I know it happened but when did it happen? The day before yesterday, and the day before that, and the year before that, and the decade before that... these all make sense, but continue back too far and it doesn't make sense any more - not to the stream of my life. It only makes sense talking to my mother or factually in a pub quiz. There are worlds outside myself that I access to make sense of time before I can remember, but what I can't do it link them all together in the single time line of the world I am brought up to believe in. Basically from my own perspective I did come ex nihilo.

So Buddha seems to have been right that there is no start and no end to the universe - that we exist in a boundless and timeless here and now. We may step outside ourself and look in to see boundaries and starts and stops but within the system there are no limits. Origins and Terminations then are relative and cannot be constructed absolutely within the entity that is created or destroyed... intuitively but why? That is the annoying SRH that still won't reveal itself. Anyway seem to have knocked down one of the major questions I had about the universe and transformed it into an SRH question... why are origins and terminations relative? Which is basically trying to look under the bonnet of the Anthropogenic Principle (which I always found unsatisfying like evolution). Come on SRH everything is waiting on you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How can girls be a part of it?

Some clarity right now... probably because I had a good wank earlier and have eaten properly for the first time in three days. This goes to show that Buddha's middle path is absolutely correct... not too ascetic that we damage our health but not too indulgent that we become softened by luxuries.

In that clarity the problem I don't really want to face and have fought for many decades... is it really possible that my middle path does involve women? I have to face that possibility now. Almost as a matter of pride I can't accept this because a girl wrote on my shirt the day we left school that she hoped I found the meaning of life one day but that she was sure it would involve women. I think naive as I was she quite liked me so you could interpret that one way, but what if after all these years (21 years) she was right in a more general way! I did another calculation a few days ago to realise that half my life has passed again since I met "my muse". That is a lot of time to struggle with something. I am going on another mammoth solo journey out onto the road for the first time since 2003 and I remember on that walk struggling with exactly the same thing... how long will this be a problem? I can't concentrate on anything properly until it is solved...

So if I do "allez" to borrow from previous posts, and turn around back into maelstrom, what is the problem? It is quite clear that pride is the first hurdle. I have to accept that "my muse" does not represent a dead end, so to speak, but rather an hurdle that I failed to mount, so to speak. It means that I have to struggle back through all that, literally pick up the road exactly where I turned back 10years ago!

Alone this is a pleasurable process really so no great problem, after pride has been swallowed, but the greater problem which I have never turned toward, or even been tempted by, is that of the "world". Do I really need to start securing territory and possessions so that I can make a home; and with that literally the weight of the world; locking myself into a cage? This part has nothing to do with pride but pure horror. I have never understood or had any inkling toward worldly things; never felt envious or lacking in anything physical except my Achilles heel of women.

So I begin this bicycle (not walking any more) with exactly the same problem as before. The desire to dip into the world of women and pleasures but then the need to get right out again to pursue what I find really purposeful - the things that make up the mind. This seems like a bad compromise, dishonesty, lack of conviction, weakness. Women who are worldly minded get hurt, it is not a good way. If my middle path does indeed require women then I need to turn away from the level of asceticism current strived for and admit my weakness, my lowliness and my failure to transcend the flesh. Almost everyone else I know goes this way, the way of failure (for a monk it is the greatest defeating sin after murder), but if I have to admit failure then it has to be done. Have I the strength? I must make a decision!

All that said there is an obvious thread in this. I have clarity because I have had a good wank, eaten and actually slept and are going on holiday tomorrow are part of it as well. This "clarity" has arisen where it was not existing before. It is as though it has been created. BUT actually I need to see the difference between some thing which has been materially "created" and something that has been "revealed". This has been in my mind for many years - I wrote it, without knowing what I was doing, in a web page for the temple 7 years ago, but now mysteriously I know what I am doing. Good that I am ready to master this idea at last. And now this blog goes into something deep...

Has the "clarity" been "created"? What is clarity, the thing that Descartes spoke of at the inception of Modernism in his "clear and distinct ideas"? People are astounded at Buddha, brought to tears, because never have they heard such wonderful and distinct Dharmas (not dharmas). Buddha had the power to cut truth from falsehood and give people clarity which is like cool mountain water to the thirsty folks in the desert of worldly confusion. Jesus speaks with the same authority - altho the difference is none of his disciples understood him (makes you wonder how many understand him today!). Roger Penrose, or Paul Davis I remember seeing, have the same power in explaining Physics.

When distractions are silenced then what remains is clarity. Bringing the mind together is what meditation is about (samadhi), removing distractions is what morality is about (sila), Understanding this is what wisdom is about (prajna). These are the classic distinctions in the East; distinctions that have have been deemed heretical in the West for some crazy reason.

So clarity is one of those "things" which wasn't and then was without being created! So Kondanna's insight at Sarnath is more complex. Not everything that we become aware of we have become aware of through "creation" and therefore is not subject to uncreation (that is decay and vanishing - which I found out "my muse"'s name means - highly allegorical that will turn out to be). It is the analogy often cited of the dirty water being left to stand for the sediment to fall out - clarity comes when the distractions are calm and the water, which was always present, is now clear.

Now the cosmic battle between Good and Evil, between Light and Darkness, is actually this battle between different types of creation:

Maya the Arch-Demon, the trickster Loki, Satan is the creator of fallen things. These are the things which have boundaries, which we can put a fence around and protect, these we can hold close to our heart, these are the things which burn when they leave us, these are the things which the SRH wants to prove invalid (in both senses of the word), these are the things which cause their bearers to turn evil and away from truth and away from one another.

Om the Ultimate principle, the Principal, the bag of Higher entities called crudely God, Buddha, Transcendence in all its facets is boundless, it escapes all attempts by the mind to puts its ethereal arms around it, it runs around and through all the things of Satan's creation effortlessly, it leaves the mind which is intoxicated by the fallen things (dharmas) utterly astonished and perplexed. This is why some say that the Creator God is actually the Devil. Anyone who thinks that God created the "things" in the world is actually a follower of Maya! That is how much of a trickster she/he is. Mammon (god of money) and the creator of the "things" are bed fellow since it is through trade of things that we have exchange value and money. God didn't create this computer of that tree - the Devil did! that is why we are tempted to own it and fight for it and do evil for it. In Hinduism this idea is captured by the story of Brahma (in whom existence appears) coming to believe that he actually created the Universe. From this single flicker of ego came all the demons that have plagued creation ever since.

I hope if this is ever read by anyone of sceptical scientific attitude the liberal use of traditional allegories and metaphors to describe what is quite involved stuff is not a problem. On the other hand if this is ever read by someone of religious familiarity I hope the use of terms like Devil is not taken literally - if the Devil exists why have we not seen him? He is much more of a trickster than to ever show himself - that would give the game away - no he IS the viewing of the universe in terms of discrete possessable things that we can lust after! We know him extremely, extremely well!!! To start being Good we must recognise that we walk with the Devil as our closest friend and ally... not seeing this people who think they are good actually get tricked into doing a lot of evil. What a lot of junk has been spawned from mis-understanding the devil: from Satanism, to all the Gothic vampire fantasy that seems so popular these days. These people - like most of us! - are victims of the very thing we worship - how gloriously foolish and ironic!

Clarity then is made distinct by removing other things. It is created by removing things. What is left, that which becomes clear then, is what is called True Mind. So True Mind, like the water in the dirty jar, isn't created or destroyed but revealing it in "clarity" is something that comes and goes. A better analogy would be to liken confusion to a shadow. We can only be in the shadow of something (sin in the analogy) because the sun is shining. So while being in a shadow (being confused) is our state it points ironically to the state of Purity and Truth. If we were never supposed to live in Clarity how could we ever be confused? Feeling confused is a great thing! I said that once to a question from the floor in an interfaith meeting by someone confused by Anatta (I am confused also ;-)... maybe it wasn't such a bad answer. In the same way suffering reminds us that we are seeking Liberation. It is time to worry then when we stop suffering because it can only mean we have forgotten where our True Home is! This world like the shadows in Plato's cave, or like Heideggar's Being hiding in the beings, or like Derrida's margins is a reminder of the True Home that is hidden from us. Now this analogy has wandered right up to the historical analogies, put its arm on the bar and ordered a couple of pints - this is exactly what Bible, Buddha, Lao Tse you name it are talking so obliquely about.

So there are two levels of creation. What is in front of our eyes - the obvious creations that are those of the Devil (in the analogies). This type don't exist and the after creation do exist, and then eventually will stop working and will decay and vanish. Then there is the True Creation which is created when we remove the false creations. Altho it is not actually created because it is already there and we know this because the false creations create a state of confusion and suffering (lack of clarity, shadow) which reminds us they are false and that they exist by obscuring the True Reality. This all sounds great, but I am struggling not to give in to the false gods!

Now the problem is that my clarity won't last, I am going the wrong way about creating it, by believing still that "my muse" would have been the door through which clarity might have been achieved. It is not that I shouldn't eat or have sex or anything, but that these are not the path to lasting clarity. A good wank may relieve one of distractions for a while, but like any drug it will only come back worse. This is why Buddha taught the 8 Fold Noble path, yet still I haven't seen exactly how my current path and the 8 Fold Path relate. Do I abandon women? The logic says yes, but I still can't see it clearly yet. At least this blog has firmly put me back on the track that I know is right, I hope like a horse being led back and back again to water one day I will drink.

Performance

Just watching Jonathon Ross show on BBC1 starting with Reverend Al Green and the energy and enthusiasm of the stars this week left old Wossy eclipsed. Not that he is the star of the show but he often has to work to get entertainment out of people... but when it comes to musical stars the energy is infectious... what is it about music that joins people and allows energy to flow from one to the many like a gift from above... truly remarkable experience that we take for granted... leaving this door open for investigation too... music always my great joy :-)