The imaginal world is emerging into post modern consciousness. We are becoming more generally aware that the biophysical world and our mental-symbolic world are different things. This emergence is due to the increasing dysjunction between the two.

   The symbolic world is our map of reality. The better our map, the more real our projection seems to be. Poor mapping is a poor grip on reality.

   Gripping reality with a map is one way to go. And if you want companions on the road, an agreed upon map of the way, like rules of the road, improves the chances of success.   The locations on the map are notional, like the jhanas of buddhism or the states and stages of sufism. Descriptions are lyrical rather than precise. Even if you mechanically maximize alpha waves or whatever, alpha waves are not enlightenment, not salvation. It’s like playing solitaire on a super computer. You win, game over, play again, until you tire of this round of samsara. 

  This is mappo, the reduction of the dharma to mechanical practices and individual self improvement schemes detached from general social life. Buddhists no longer dress in rags and go begging for food door to door.  

   There is another way to grasp reality, through non dualism, but it is incommunicable. Though the source of all - call it “nature”- it can’t be “used” as we think because we are a part of it. As chief seattle said, “The earth was not made for man, man was made for the earth.”

   Yet our psycho-social maps tend to leave nature out, as though it were an endless resource of “goods” for us to exploit and squander. Rome is burning and we are fiddling.

   Though we see “happiness” as our goal individually and collectively the dysjunction between the biophysical world and the mental and emotional framework we use for living in it  has eroded our abilities to achieve it. 

  Buddhism originated in a reframing of the human project. It was a reaction to the growing realization that wealth and comfort did not make for human happiness, a repudiation of materialism. It involved an acknowledgement that at least some segments of society needed to embrace a wholesome, non destructive lifestyle, free of violence and excess. One characterized by compassion for all sentient being.  

  The buddhism of the day predicted the dharma would decline. Ny contention here is that the climate catastrophe now occurring needs to be mapped symbolically and dealt with as reality. By any means possible. Including buddhism, including “pragmatic dharma,”


   The buddha says, “wake up.” That is, map us a way to sentience surviving. Call it salvation.


(aside -

I’ve been thinking about the collapse of civilization and a return of the surviving few to a neo neolithic age.
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We find ourselves not only in a climate hostile world, but a world in which all of the readily available resources - copper, tin, gold, coal, sulfur, mega fauna etc etc have been exhausted and dissipated, even fresh water and wood.The most abundant source of fresh meat other humans. And no way to cook them. We file our teeth to make them sharper. )


   

"The names of the bodhisattvas were Bodhisattva Viewing Equality, Bodhisattva Viewing Inequality, Bodhisattva Viewing Equality and Inequality, Bodhisattva Meditation Freedom King, Bodhisattva Dharma Freedom King, Bodhisattva Dharma Forms," - Chapter 1, Vimalakirti sutra

I wouldn't say Bodhisattva Dharma Forms is less than Bodhisattva Dharma Freedom King though, both are Bodhisattvas

Nope, Buddha taught the "Middle Way", between materialism and ascetism. Both "philosophies" (for the lack of a better term) were already fighting each other back then. 

A repudiation of excess, then. Yes, the world was already a burning house and the end apparent.

one potato, two potato, three potato, four

Yeah, I know what you mean, Climate Change + Russia & China threating a nuclear war is a whole new level of distress, yet we are living in the best time in History. At the time of the Buddha, Lao Tse or Jesus life was short and brutal for today's standards (~45 years, high infant mortality, starvation, epidemics, warfare and violence, etc). They too thought of an impending havoc. In India there was that idea of cyclical destruction, in China the never-ending warring states, in Judea the upcoming end of the world, etc. Much of these ideas derive from the transition from a rural to an urban civilizations 

   

   Living in the best time in history, eh. I assume you live in "the global north." A dickensian tale of two hemispheres; the best of times, the worst of times. As in the american antebellum south, life was good for the exploiters, bad for the exploited. And really, it was not so good for the wealthy either, their twisted values causing many pathologies.

   We have eliminated the negative feedbacks that limit population growth. This has enabled us to overshoot the carrying capacity of our environment, the ability of the environment to supply nutrients and assimilate waste, so rapidly that our population has grown to obviously unsustainable levels.

   This is indeed the most remarkable time in history, the human empire at its greatest extent, on the brink of starving and choking on its own waste. Human population of eight billion was three billion in 1950. We've used half of the fossil fuel ever burnt in the last thirty years, and made half of the plastic; the next thirty years are set to double these numbers again. Our world economy is based on continuous growth. This is obviously unsustainable but with technology we have maintained it for a few generations, extracting ever more difficult to reach minerals, substituting as we go and keeping an exponential growth curve reflected by hockey stick graphs. When growth ends society will have collapsed. There is literally no path to sustainability for the bulk of earth's population.

   So we as humans have lived entirely through this period of exceptional unprecedented unsustainable growth. Children of summer. Winter is coming.

   The buddha turned his back on the comfortable convenient lies of his father the king and experienced hunger and thirst and exposure. He advocated a correct, sustainable path, advocating values that could be practiced independently of wealth and economic status.

   How about green buddhism? We could plant a trillion upaya trees.

bill rees outlines the problem and advises religions...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3GB191UDiI

https://youtu.be/LT3cERVRoQo?si=u5cq05AyndQIxZJm

Nope. I live in "the poor south", with a mean of 12% of monthly inflation rate, 40% of poverty, 10% of indigence, mean salaries below USD 500, pensions of USD 150, etc. My country sucks, but our poor neighbours have constantly done better and reduce poverty consistently over the last couple of decades. That also happened in India, China and some African countries as well.
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​​​​​​​Yeah!! Love that!

Seagrass is better for carbon sequestration because it the carbon is eventually buried under sediment in an anoxic regime. Trees are just temporary as when they die they either get burnt for fuel or fungi decompose then and the carbon returns to the atmosphere.

Only feasible way to sequester carbon derived from fossil fuel is to leave it in the ground.  Needless to say, we haven't been taking that option. Imagine huge pipelines putting carbon back into the ground at the rate we are taking it out and you may appreciate the scale of the problem.

Since altering the gaseous composition of the atmosphere is a done deal, it is almost inevitable that an increasingly desperate world will attempt geoengineering, such as injecting aerosols into the stratosphere. What could possibly go wrong? Best outcome it works and masks global warming, in which case we will have to keep injecting more and more as the planet tries to heat up. When the injection system inevitably fails the resulting warming will be toasty.

There are more people living in poverty now than existed in 1950.

And the trends are going down due to climate change. Poverty and hunger and displacement are increasing.

Tourism is one of the industries we need to stop. Ground all the planes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t5RrUt3nrY

Actually a nuclear war would probably be better for the biosphere than continuing to pump co2 into the atmosphere. Runaway gloabal warming - setting off the clathrate bomb - could take the biosphere fifty million years to recover, versus only tens or hundreds of thousands of years for nuclear war. Assuming runaway global warming doesn't turn earth into another venus, also a possibility.

best mapping of a near future transition which deals with climate change on many levels

(drum roll please)


kim stanley robinson's recent masterwork of science fiction, "ministry for the future"...

   One of he attractions of “pragmatic dharma” is that it doesn’t sneer at science or religion. It rides the interface between the biophysical world and the “mind.” Mainstream science consensus is valued and solicited.

   So even more reason to include overshoot slash climate change slash resulting social upheaval as mappable elements in our spiritual journeys. “Interesting times” inspired the taoists and the sufis to challenge the religious institutions of their times with the mystic power of transcendent love to change ideology and facilitate spiritual (r)evolution.

   For one thing the world is closer together than ever, the internet and travel and rubbing elbows with eight billion souls bring us closer together. Now the shared experience of climate change is beginning to wake us up to our collective nature as a super-organism. There is nowhere on the planet that is safe, no resorts, no latitudes, no islands of stability. We are all in the same boat.

   It is becoming increasingly obvious that human world culture must change due to environmental pressure. Continued exponential growth has always been unsustainable but now it appears it must come to a stop within a few years or sooner.

   Conservatives traditionally want to maintain the status quo and progressives want to change things for the better, but both approaches are irrelevant when it’s all hands on deck to bail and reduce sail. Yet the same thinking prevails. No one has a workable plan the honestly addresses the real situation. People who understand the problem best are the most deeply pessinistic. Perhaps grief counseling is all we have left. But pascal's wager encourages us to bet on whatever path might enable sentience to survive.

   Waking up to this reality might happen much faster than we might think. We responded to covid deaths with massive spending and when millions die from heat waves and grid failures similar expenditures will likely be forthcoming. The people who have been thinking and talking about these things for decades will start to be listened to. The prospect of artifical intelligence may end up being our savior by enabling effective degrowth decentralized economic planning.

   We need to be designing new ways of global cooperation in a post growth world. How to handle declining populations and declining harvests and decreasing use of material goods with grace and fairness. The opportunity to create more social equity is the silver lining to the whole project.

 Map this!

   

"The major problems in the world are  the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think."
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~gregory bateson

Nate hagens, one of our new noahs, has a pod cast. I think of his sort of work as “arkology” which I might define as studying ways we may engineer a soft transition to a post fossil fuel civilization.

In this episode, which just came out a couple of days ago, he interviews stanford professor and primate researcher doctor robert sapolsky (“call me robert”) about his new not yet published book  determined; a science of life without free will. 

The interview is lengthy and by the end robert is pretty convincing that everything anyone does is mediated by neurotransmitters rather mechanistnically. He manages to do this without being reductionistic.

His mechanism is much like karma, just cause and effect and no magical thinking.

Nothing is free, least of all will. 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhobcj2K9v4


If you watch the interview you might appreciate why I think the following quote is apropos. I thought it quite funny.



from spinoza, ethics, part one


APPENDIX:

In the foregoing I have explained the nature and properties of God. I have shown that he necessarily exists, that he is one: that he is, and acts solely by the necessity of his own nature; that he is the free cause of all things, and how he is so; that all things are in God, and so depend on him, that without him they could neither exist nor be conceived; lastly, that all things are predetermined by God, not through his free will or absolute fiat, but from the very nature of God or infinite power. I have further, where occasion afforded, taken care to remove the prejudices, which might impede the comprehension of my demonstrations. Yet there still remain misconceptions not a few, which might and may prove very grave hindrances to the understanding of the concatenation of things, as I have explained it above. I have therefore thought it worth while to bring these misconceptions before the bar of reason.

All such opinions spring from the notion commonly entertained, that all things in nature act as men themselves act, namely, with an end in view. It is accepted as certain, that God himself directs all things to a definite goal (for it is said that God made all things for man, and man that he might worship him). I will, therefore, consider this opinion, asking first, why it obtains general credence, and why all men are naturally so prone to adopt it? secondly, I will point out its falsity; and, lastly, I will show how it has given rise to prejudices about good and bad, right and wrong, praise and blame, order and confusion, beauty and ugliness, and the like. However, this is not the place to deduce these misconceptions from the nature of the human mind: it will be sufficient here, if I assume as a starting point, what ought to be universally admitted, namely, that all men are born ignorant of the causes of things, that all have the desire to seek for what is useful to them, and that they are conscious of such desire. Herefrom it follows, first, that men think themselves free inasmuch as they are conscious of their volitions and desires, and never even dream, in their ignorance, of the causes which have disposed them so to wish and desire. Secondly, that men do all things for an end, namely, for that which is useful to them, and which they seek. Thus it comes to pass that they only look for a knowledge of the final causes of events, and when these are learned, they are content, as having no cause for further doubt. If they cannot learn such causes from external sources, they are compelled to turn to considering themselves, and reflecting what end would have induced them personally to bring about the given event, and thus they necessarily judge other natures by their own. Further, as they find in themselves and outside themselves many means which assist them not a little in the search for what is useful, for instance, eyes for seeing, teeth for chewing, herbs and animals for yielding food, the sun for giving light, the sea for breeding fish, &c., they come to look on the whole of nature as a means for obtaining such conveniences. Now as they are aware, that they found these conveniences and did not make them, they think they have cause for believing, that some other being has made them for their use. As they look upon things as means, they cannot believe them to be self—created; but, judging from the means which they are accustomed to prepare for themselves, they are bound to believe in some ruler or rulers of the universe endowed with human freedom, who have arranged and adapted everything for human use. They are bound to estimate the nature of such rulers (having no information on the subject) in accordance with their own nature, and therefore they assert that the gods ordained everything for the use of man, in order to bind man to themselves and obtain from him the highest honor. Hence also it follows, that everyone thought out for himself, according to his abilities, a different way of worshipping God, so that God might love him more than his fellows, and direct the whole course of nature for the satisfaction of his blind cupidity and insatiable avarice. Thus the prejudice developed into superstition, and took deep root in the human mind; and for this reason everyone strove most zealously to understand and explain the final causes of things; but in their endeavor to show that nature does nothing in vain, i.e. nothing which is useless to man, they only seem to have demonstrated that nature, the gods, and men are all mad together. Consider, I pray you, the result: among the many helps of nature they were bound to find some hindrances, such as storms, earthquakes, diseases, &c.: so they declared that such things happen, because the gods are angry at some wrong done to them by men, or at some fault committed in their worship. Experience day by day protested and showed by infinite examples, that good and evil fortunes fall to the lot of pious and impious alike; still they would not abandon their inveterate prejudice, for it was more easy for them to class such contradictions among other unknown things of whose use they were ignorant, and thus to retain their actual and innate condition of ignorance, than to destroy the whole fabric of their reasoning and start afresh. They therefore laid down as an axiom, that God's judgments far transcend human understanding. Such a doctrine might well have sufficed to conceal the truth from the human race for all eternity, if mathematics had not furnished another standard of verity in considering solely the essence and properties of figures without regard to their final causes. There are other reasons (which I need not mention here) besides mathematics, which might have caused men's minds to be directed to these general prejudices, and have led them to the knowledge of the truth.

I have now sufficiently explained my first point. There is no need to show at length, that nature has no particular goal in view, and that final causes are mere human figments. This, I think, is already evident enough, both from the causes and foundations on which I have shown such prejudice to be based, and also from Prop. xvi., and the Corollary of Prop. xxxii., and, in fact, all those propositions in which I have shown, that everything in nature proceeds from a sort of necessity, and with the utmost perfection. However, I will add a few remarks, in order to overthrow this doctrine of a final cause utterly. That which is really a cause it considers as an effect, and vice versâ: it makes that which is by nature first to be last, and that which is highest and most perfect to be most imperfect. Passing over the questions of cause and priority as self—evident, it is plain from Props. xxi., xxii., xxiii. that the effect is most perfect which is produced immediately by God; the effect which requires for its production several intermediate causes is, in that respect, more imperfect. But if those things which were made immediately by God were made to enable him to attain his end, then the things which come after, for the sake of which the first were made, are necessarily the most excellent of all.

Further, this doctrine does away with the perfection of God: for, if God acts for an object, he necessarily desires something which he lacks. Certainly, theologians and metaphysicians draw a distinction between the object of want and the object of assimilation; still they confess that God made all things for the sake of himself, not for the sake of creation. They are unable to point to anything prior to creation, except God himself, as an object for which God should act, and are therefore driven to admit (as they clearly must), that God lacked those things for whose attainment he created means, and further that he desired them.

We must not omit to notice that the followers of this doctrine, anxious to display their talent in assigning final causes, have imported a new method of argument in proof of their theory—namely, a reduction, not to the impossible, but to ignorance; thus showing that they have no other method of exhibiting their doctrine. For example, if a stone falls from a roof on to someone's head, and kills him, they will demonstrate by their new method, that the stone fell in order to kill the man; for, if it had not by God's will fallen with that object, how could so many circumstances (and there are often many concurrent circumstances) have all happened together by chance? Perhaps you will answer that the event is due to the facts that the wind was blowing, and the man was walking that way. "But why," they will insist, "was the wind blowing, and why was the man at that very time walking that way?" If you again answer, that the wind had then sprung up because the sea had begun to be agitated the day before, the weather being previously calm, and that the man had been invited by a friend, they will again insist: "But why was the sea agitated, and why was the man invited at that time?" So they will pursue their questions from cause to cause, till at last you take refuge in the will of God—in other words, the sanctuary of ignorance. So, again, when they survey the frame of the human body, they are amazed; and being ignorant of the causes of so great a work of art, conclude that it has been fashioned, not mechanically, but by divine and supernatural skill, and has been so put together that one part shall not hurt another.

Hence anyone who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is set down and denounced as an impious heretic by those, whom the masses adore as the interpreters of nature and the gods. Such persons know that, with the removal of ignorance, the wonder which forms their only available means for proving and preserving their authority would vanish also. But I now quit this subject, and pass on to my third point.

After men persuaded themselves, that everything which is created is created for their sake, they were bound to consider as the chief quality in everything that which is most useful to themselves, and to account those things the best of all which have the most beneficial effect on mankind. Further, they were bound to form abstract notions for the explanation of the nature of things, such as goodness, badness, order, confusion, warmth, cold, beauty, deformity, and so on; and from the belief that they are free agents arose the further notions of praise and blame, sin and merit.

I will speak of these latter hereafter, when I treat of human nature; the former I will briefly explain here.

Everything which conduces to health and the worship of God they have called good, everything which hinders these objects they have styled bad; and inasmuch as those who do not understand the nature of things do not verify phenomena in any way, but merely imagine them after a fashion, and mistake their imagination for understanding, such persons firmly believe that there is an order in things, being really ignorant both of things and their own nature. When phenomena are of such a kind, that the impression they make on our senses requires little effort of imagination, and can consequently be easily remembered, we say that they are well—ordered; if the contrary, that they are ill—ordered or confused. Further, as things which are easily imagined are more pleasing to us, men prefer order to confusion—as though there were any order in nature, except in relation to our imagination—and say that God has created all things in order; thus, without knowing it, attributing imagination to God, unless, indeed, they would have it that God foresaw human imagination, and arranged everything, so that it should be most easily imagined. If this be their theory, they would not, perhaps, be daunted by the fact that we find an infinite number of phenomena, far surpassing our imagination, and very many others which confound its weakness. But enough has been said on this subject. The other abstract notions are nothing but modes of imagining, in which the imagination is differently affected: though they are considered by the ignorant as the chief attributes of things, inasmuch as they believe that everything was created for the sake of themselves; and, according as they are affected by it, style it good or bad, healthy or rotten and corrupt. For instance, if the motion which objects we see communicate to our nerves be conducive to health, the objects causing it are styled beautiful; if a contrary motion be excited, they are styled ugly.

Things which are perceived through our sense of smell are styled fragrant or fetid; if through our taste, sweet or bitter, full—flavored or insipid; if through our touch, hard or soft, rough or smooth, &c.

Whatsoever affects our ears is said to give rise to noise, sound, or harmony. In this last case, there are men lunatic enough to believe, that even God himself takes pleasure in harmony; and philosophers are not lacking who have persuaded themselves, that the motion of the heavenly bodies gives rise to harmony—all of which instances sufficiently show that everyone judges of things according to the state of his brain, or rather mistakes for things the forms of his imagination. We need no longer wonder that there have arisen all the controversies we have witnessed, and finally skepticism: for, although human bodies in many respects agree, yet in very many others they differ; so that what seems good to one seems bad to another; what seems well ordered to one seems confused to another; what is pleasing to one displeases another, and so on. I need not further enumerate, because this is not the place to treat the subject at length, and also because the fact is sufficiently well known. It is commonly said: "So many men, so many minds; everyone is wise in his own way; brains differ as completely as palates." All of which proverbs show, that men judge of things according to their mental disposition, and rather imagine than understand: for, if they understood phenomena, they would, as mathematicians attest, be convinced, if not attracted, by what I have urged.

We have now perceived, that all the explanations commonly given of nature are mere modes of imagining, and do not indicate the true nature of anything, but only the constitution of the imagination; and, although they have names, as though they were entities, existing externally to the imagination, I call them entities imaginary rather than real; and, therefore, all arguments against us drawn from such abstractions are easily rebutted.

Many argue in this way. If all things follow from a necessity of the absolutely perfect nature of God, why are there so many imperfections in nature? such, for instance, as things corrupt to the point of putridity, loathsome deformity, confusion, evil, sin, &c. But these reasoners are, as I have said, easily confuted, for the perfection of things is to be reckoned only from their own nature and power; things are not more or less perfect, according as they delight or offend human senses, or according as they are serviceable or repugnant to mankind. To those who ask why God did not so create all men, that they should be governed only by reason, I give no answer but this: because matter was not lacking to him for the creation of every degree of perfection from highest to lowest; or, more strictly, because the laws of his nature are so vast, as to suffice for the production of everything conceivable by an infinite intelligence, as I have shown in Prop. xvi.

Such are the misconceptions I have undertaken to note; if there are any more of the same sort, everyone may easily dissipate them for himself with the aid of a little reflection.

the elephant and the clam


One of the fundamental contradictions of buddhist metaphysics I often return to is the two ways of mapping the dynamic biophysical world, and the hermeneutics of interpreting the world between these poles.

Namely, karma and paticcasamuppada; the law of causation and the law of dependent origination. These laws reveal the mechanics of the way things work and the nature of the system in which they interact.

The narrow scientific disciplines study mechanics and ecologists, futurists and visionaries try to understand the way it all fits together. We have lots of data but the narrowness of our focus tends to bring out another law, the law of unintended consequences.


Ocean scientist peter ward talks about sam wasser, who has developed a method whereby he can study the dna of elephants from a tiny sliver of ivory. Using this technique he can determine within a few kilometers the source of the ivory. Application of this method has led to the stoppage of most of the illegal trade in elephant tusks. The elephants themselves have been rapidly evolving a tuskless elephant.

Much of the ivory had been going to china for the production of little trinkets sold all over the world. Filipinos have discovered that the inner surface of the giant clam has a substance that mimics ivory perfectly and so a big trade in giant clams has ensued. These magnificent animals live 200-300 years and are cemented into the already endangered coral reefs such that great destruction to the reef is caused by their removal. The clams are now functionally extinct throughout most of their range in southeast asia, according to ward.

"I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is."
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~the buddha (greta thunberg)

I emailed robert some comments and the quote from spinoza. My thinking was that his argument is basically spinozistic and philosophical rather than scientific.

He replied the following:

quote

Thanks for this -- Spinoza is great, one of my heroes, at least since I found out that he got excommunicated (or whatever the Jewish equivalent is) for asking some skeptical questions about God...

​​​​​​​unquote

Nice. 

There's a pot of gold at the end of the mechanical practices rainbow if we allow for it. But to get that you have to get out beyond the mechanical part and deep into the mysterious, chaotic, and wonderfully unmappable part.

The mysterious, chaotic, wonderful, terrifying and as yet unmapped future.

Blazing trails on trackless ocean.


I wonder if people taste like chicken? Probably pork. The other other white meat.

In some literature, I believe human flesh is called "long pork." We could ask the Donner Party what the taste is like but they're all dead.

By the time we get to long pig we'll be quite familiar with dog, cat and rat.

There was a book about a soccer team whose plane was lost in the andes and who resorted to human flesh, the dead bodies presrved in snow. They went into graphic detail about the tastier parts and howto prepare them, and of course they ate their special friends last.

from

​​​​​​​THIS CIVILISATION IS FINISHED
Conversations on the end of Empire—and what lies
beyond
Rupert Read and Samuel Alexander


SA: How do you conceive of your role
as a ‘teacher’ in a civilisation that is in decline?


RR: In answer, let me go back for a second to much earlier in the
educational process. We are beings born in a state of extreme
vulnerability and unformedness. When we are really young, there are
some truths (such as mortality) that we need to be led into only
slowly: to confront an infant mind with them immediately might break
that mind, or break the spirit, break the heart. It’s not right to
translate one’s spirit of honesty and truthfulness—a spirit that is
foundational for everything I aspire to do and be—into a dogma of
absolute frankness always about everything to everyone at all times.

But the terrible mistake that our civilisation has made, I believe, is to
turn the truth about our dying civilisation into an excuse for lying
systematically to our children. We lie to our children every time we
pretend that they can expect an ordinary career of their choice in an
endlessly growing economy. We lie to them every time we present
them with an image of a ‘typical’ farm full of happy outdoor pigs,
cows, and hens. We lie to them every time we tell them we love
them while giving them a new piece of plastic crap before turning our
attention swiftly back to our mobile phones. We lie to them, and
ourselves, if we think or declare that we love them and yet the
actions we take, rather than being directed with determination toward
the aim of seeking to transform this civilisation for the better, actually
hasten its likely collapse.

We lie to them because much of the time we lie to ourselves, of
course. But also because we are pierced by the thought that their
innocence shouldn’t be swept away instantly before it has had any
time to give them some feeling of safety within which they can
become sanely ‘attached’ and sanely individuated. And, as I started
by saying, there is a grain of rightness and truth in that approach.
But I think that we have got the balance badly wrong. There is no
excuse for lying systematically, and with each year older a child gets,
there is ever less of an excuse for not being truthful. By the time
children have reached 18 or so, and maybe gone to university, there
is absolutely no excuse.

It is abominable—although understandable, given peer-pressure and
institutional pressures—that most academics are concealing from
their students the dire realities and probabilities and possibilities that
now hang over them. We ought to be frankly teaching our students
at every opportunity about the extremity of the ecological crisis,
about the out-datedness of their economics curriculum (and in fact,
arguably, of most curricula), about how unmoored our species has
become from reality. We ought to be teaching them, too, things like
how to grow their own food, rather than pretending that they are all
going to have ‘wonderful’ digital jobs and the like.

Hey Terry!

If you're interested in the collapse of civilization, look into the Bronze Age collage. I find it intriguing from a historical point of view, and it has a lot of parallels to what's happening today. But to provide a bit of a counterpoint - we focus on a lot of microphenomena, how the breath changes from moment to moment and stuff like that, but the idea of impermanence holds for "big things" too - like societies, life, nature, etc. I had the good chance to take a paleontology class in college, and I remember learning about the 5 massive extinction events, where basically almost all life got extinguished. The one that always struck me was the "great oxygenation event", where basically all life at that point didn't need oxygen, but produced tons of it, and so they essentially poisoned themselves, and while it killed all of them it prepared an atmosphere that would bring in what we think of as life these days. I remember our TA for the class said something as a response to climate change along the lines of "well humans might be fucked, but life on earth will survive". I bring this up just to mention that our lives, and humanity in general, will be like the appearance of a breath - it will appear, abide, and cease. Maybe soon, maybe not. Rome fell and so shall we, but may we have a rein as long as the dinosaurs!

So you should view this fleeting world --
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightening in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

   I have studied the bronze age collapse intently. Global supply chains collapsed, just couldn't get tin and copper to show up just in time. Once trade was disrupted, food distribution failed generally and hungry people did what they always do, steal from their neighbors. 

   One may face this recurring future with a certain sang froid, if not schadenfreude, except for the likelihood that it will occur quite soon, abruptly and with little warning. Babies now may not reach double digits. Societal collapse will result in a great deal of human suffering, not to mention the innocent animals caught up in the slaughter.

   How soon this will happen is not strictly relevant. It has been pointed out that if you are headed for a wall at 100 mph it hardly matters if you are ten feet away or two feet away. We're wile e coyote gone over the cliff but we haven't dropped yet.

   If you back up this thread some I have already agreed with you that the death of our species is unimportant in the grand scheme of things, even the destruction of the planet will happen eventually. But, seriously dude, this is a rather spectacular failure and we have front row seats. The vilest of contradictions are being performed before our eyes. The star of david the new swastika, gaza the new warsaw ghetto. The american flag a symbol of fascism. Police and borders militarized. The wall between india and bangladesh is truly horrifying and inhuman. Breadbasket ukraine has more landmines than anywhere in history. The ipcc reports are being proven to have been wildly optimistic. Plutocracy, oligopoly and gerontocracy are not providing leadership.

   Equanimity is not denial. Compassion is proactive. And with geologic changes we're pretty far behind the curve. According to james hansen's latest peer reviewed paper, ten degrees centigrade of gloabal warming is already baked in the pipeline. I'm thinking this is likely to lead to an end permian level extinction event, in which 90% of all species were wiped out, and many of them were down to a handful of individuals. Life survived but it very well might not survive us.

   Look at venus. A runaway greenhouse gas event and the planet is toast. Look at mars which also had watery oceans and was similarly in the goldilocks zone. It would not surprise me to learn that venus at least had evolved "intelligent" life who so altered their atmosphere's gaseous composition as to trigger irreversible permanent catastrophic climate change. 

   The dinosaurs had time to evolve and develop a web of life that sustained itself hundreds of millions of years. They're reign didn't involve destroying their environment irreparably and virtually instantly. Our "great carbonization event" is happening in a completely unprecedented eyeblink of geologic time. Our sixth great extinction has given species no time to adapt and evolve in response to our predation.

   There are many facing this reality who think that extinction level events are ok and inevitable in the long run, so why worry.  No species has hit the limits of growth gracefully and most crash hard when they run out of nutrients, having destroyed or damaged the resources on which they had depended. All logical and understandable. But not only is the collapse going to be horrendous for the entire planetary environment, we are complicit in the inevitability of the destruction.

   The least we can do is object, and say, not in our name. Better, we can try to live sustainably and develop ways of coping with the changes. 






hansen's pipeline paper:

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/Documents/PipelinePaper.2023.05.19.pdf




THE TENT
(rumi, trans barks)
  
    Outside, the freezing desert night.
    This other night inside grows warm, kindling.
    Let the landscape be covered with thorny crust.
    We have a soft garden in here.
    The continents blasted,
    cities and little towns, everything
    become a scorched, blackened ball.

    The news we hear is full of grief for that future,
    but the real news inside here
    is there’s no news at all.

The only thing new about war, famine, disease, extinction, etc is our eyes to see it. The gears of climate change have been turning since the Industrial Revolution and those gears will turn after we both die. Welcome to samsara, sorry it doesn't meet your expectations. 

"'I am subject to aging, have not gone beyond aging.' This is the first fact that one should reflect on often, whether one is a woman or a man, lay or ordained.
"'I am subject to illness, have not gone beyond illness.' ...
"'I am subject to death, have not gone beyond death.' ...
"'I will grow different, separate from all that is dear and appealing to me.' ...
​​​​​​​"'I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions, born of my actions, related through my actions, and have my actions as my arbitrator. Whatever I do, for good or for evil, to that will I fall heir.' ...

The Upajjhatthana Sutta.

I think it's important to reflect on the last two points.

You are missing the point.

The arrow is in your body and you need a physician.

Welcome to mappo.

and I'm sorry it meets your expectations...

The Second Coming
William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   
The darkness drops again; but now I know   
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

from shunryu suzuki, branching streams flow in the darkness:


To accept things-as-it-is looks very difficult, but it is very easy. If you don’t find it easy, you should think about why it is difficult. “Maybe,” you may say, “it is because of the shallow, selfish understanding I have of myself.” And then you may ask, “Why do I have a selfish understanding of things?”

 But a selfish understanding of things is also necessary. Because we are selfish, we work hard. Without a selfish understanding, we cannot work. We always need some candy, and a selfish understanding is a kind of candy. It is not something to be rejected, but something that helps you. You should be grateful for your selfish understanding, which creates many questions. They are just questions and they don’t mean so much. You can enjoy your questions and answers; you can play games with them; you needn’t be so serious about it. That is the understanding of the Middle Way.

We can understand the Middle Way as ri, emptiness, and ji, somethingness. Both are necessary. Because we are human beings and our destiny is to live for possibly eighty or ninety years, we must have a selfish way of life. Because we have a selfish way of life, we will have difficulties that we should accept. When we accept difficulties, that itself is the Middle Way.

.   .   .


Without rejecting your selfish way of life, you must accept it—but don’t stick to it! Just enjoy your human life as long as you live. That is the Middle Way, the understanding of ri and ji. When there is ri, there is ji; when there is ji, there is ri. To understand difficulty in this way is to enjoy your life without rejecting problems or suffering.To find the oneness of ri and ji, the oneness of joy and suffering, the oneness of the joy of enlightenment within difficulty, is our practice. This is called the Middle Way. Do you understand? Where there is suffering, there is the joy of suffering, or nirvana. Even in nirvana, you cannot get out of suffering. We say nirvana is the complete extinction of desires, but what that means is to have this complete understanding and to live according to it. That is zazen. You are sitting upright. You are not leaning over to the side of nirvana or leaning over to the side of su¤ering. You are right here. 

Everyone can sit up and practice zazen.

this poem was written by a 20 year old palestinian american, a brilliant junior at brown university in mathematics and archeology, and a graduate of the friends school in ramallah (quaker)... along with two friends who are also brilliant college students and fellow friends school grads was shot in the spine in burlington vermont for wearing a kaffiya and speaking arabic in celebration of a holiday with relatives...

he wrote this poem while at the friends school in sixth grade...


this boy was centered



HOPE DWELLS IN MY HEART
by hisham awartani


Hope dwells in my heart

It shines like a light in darkness

This light cannot be smothered

It cannot be drowned out by tears and the screams of the wounded

It only grows in strength

This light can outshine hate

This light can outshine injustice

It outshines segregation and apartheid

As of Greek legend, Pandora opened a box

And when she did that, all the evil escaped

Luckily, Pandora closed the jar before hope could escape

And as long as hope stayed in that jar

Hope would never escape

So I ask you one thing, learn from that story

Learn never to give up hope

Learn to let hope give power

In the darkest of times

And let the light shine

stars, I have seen them fall
(a e housman)

​​​​​​​Stars, I have seen them fall,
But when they drop and die
No star is lost at all
From all the star-sown sky.
The toil of all that be
Helps not the primal fault;
It rains into the sea,
And still the sea is salt.

The present is embodied in Hexagram 12 - P'I (Stagnation): There is a lack of understanding between the different classes of men, and its indication is unfavorable to the firm and correct course of the superior man. We see in it greatness gone and the lesser come upon us.

There are no changing lines, and hence the situation is expected to remain the same in the immediate future.
    

“The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.”
― William Blake

“So, let’s say you’re a peacock and you have your grand tail, which likely evolved because it shows health and wellbeing, hence fitness. But the peahen just cares that you’ve got the biggest tail. Or… you’ve got your caveman in the Stone Age brings a mammoth in to show he’s a big hunter, you’re with me? And hunting’s the game, the actual important activity that’s being judged. Except Og next door just bonks Thog on the head and steals the mammoth, and that’s the metagame. Og’s a lousy hunter because he spends his time and effort not on hunting, but on the secondary activity that’s supposed to show how good a hunter you are. And so he wins out over Thog, gets the girl, becomes chief. And your worker who ‘kisses ass’ is seen as management material not because they give their all to the company, but because they spend that effort they would otherwise give to the company on looking like they give it all to the company. They spend it on all the little social games instead, and because effort spent on the metagame is focused entirely about the appearance of virtue, it overshadows those who are actually performing the primary task, it overshadows actual virtue. And this is how human hierarchical structures end up working. This is why the people who end up in authority are generally not those focused on whatever the purpose of the community is, but those who are focused on achieving positions of authority. This is why you have career politicians, why administrators end up pulling ten times the salary of a surgeon or an academic under their administration, why performing well in an exam or a test is not actually the same as being good at the thing the exam is supposed to be testing. Because the metagame outweighs the game.”

Excerpt From
Bear Head
Adrian Tchaikovsky

 If I must die
(refaat alareer)

If I must die,

you must live

to tell my story

to sell my things

to buy a piece of cloth

and some strings,

(make it white with a long tail)

so that a child, somewhere in Gaza

while looking heaven in the eye

awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—

and bid no one farewell

not even to his flesh

not even to himself—

sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up

above

and thinks for a moment an angel is there

bringing back love

If I must die

let it bring hope

let it be a tale.

from  The Faith of a Heretic by walter kaufmann (1963)


…narrow specialization must be discouraged, and students have to be prevented from attaching themselves closely to a single teacher, in the manner still traditional at German universities, in spite of Mephisto's forthright mockery in Goethe's Faust:

Here, too, it would be best you heard
One only and staked all upon your master's word. 
Yes, stick to words at any rate;
There never was a surer gate
Into the temple, Certainty.

It would, of course, be silly for a teacher to lean over back­ward to make sure that no information leaks out to his stu­dents. But he might do well to ask himself what could be got as well, if not much better, by consulting books, and what is better learned through personal encounter with a teacher.

The classroom situation lends itself much better than most books to stimulating and maintaining real interest in a variety of different views. Most people tend to restrict their reading to congenial views and like to be confirmed in what they be­lieve anyway. Exposure to different teachers, encountered in the flesh, and to other students, preferably from different back­grounds, can compel the student to consider many different views, taking them seriously. This should wean him from bigotry and blind naivete. He should also learn that no man has authority, except provisionally: all opinions are subject to critical examination, though some may prevail even after acid tests.

Is such pervasive mistrust of authorities arrogant? On the
contrary: through the painful discovery that even very great men have been guilty of egregious errors, we learn that the chances are that we ourselves, even when very confident that we are right, may overestimate our case. Constant contact with minds greater than our own is humbling; constant re­minders of their shortcomings, doubly so. Moreover, it is diffi­cult to recognize one's own mistakes. They are much more easily recognized when one encounters them in someone else's prose. Dissatisfied with oneself, one becomes a seeker. Dif­ficulty becomes a challenge and delight; critical thinking, a way of life.

from the introduction by john wild to totality and infinity by emmanuel levinas…


The questioning glance of the other is seeking for a meaningful response. Of course, I may give only a casual word, and go on my own way with indifference, passing the other by. But if communication and community is to be achieved, a real response, a responsible answer must be given. This means that I must be ready to put my world into words, and to offer it to the other. There can be no free interchange without some­ thing to give. Responsible communication depends on an initial act of generosity, a giving of my world to him with all its dubious assumptions and arbitrary features. They are then exposed to the questions of the other, and an escape from egotism becomes possible.

It has been and is still widely held that this can be achieved only by a joint sacrifice of self to a neutral, englobing system. But Levinas brings forth very strong evidence to show that this is not the case. By speaking to the other I enter into a relation with him. But this speaking does not bind me down or limit me, because I remain at a distance from what is said. Hence real conversation with an other cannot be exhaus­tively planned. I am never sure just what he will say, and there is al­ways room for reinterpretation and spontaneity on both sides. My autonomy remains intact. In fact, in so far as I have any, it is stimu­lated to further intensity by searching questions from a point of view that is not merely opposite and therefore correlative to mine, but gen­uinely other. I can always say what I wish, and even begin once again de novo. The same is true of the other. He does not merely present me with lifeless signs into which I am free to read meanings of my own. His expressions bear his meanings, and he is himself present to bring them out and defend them. There is no difference between the active expres­sion and what is expressed. The two coincide. The other is not an ob­ject that must be interpreted and illumined by my alien light. He shines forth with his own light, and speaks for himself.

Levinas, of course, is not denying that a great part of our speaking and thinking is systematic and bound by logic of some kind. What he is interested in showing is that prior to these systems, which are required to meet many needs, and presupposed by them is the existing individual and his ethical choice to welcome the stranger and to share his world by speaking to him. In other words, we do not become social by first being systematic. We become systematic and orderly in our thinking by first freely making a choice for generosity and communication, i.e., for the social. 'What we call thinking and speaking is very often only a playing with our own words and concepts or a succession of egocentric mono­logues. But according to Levinas, speaking becomes serious only when we pay attention to the other and take account of him and the strange world he inhabits. It is only by responding to him that I become aware of the arbitrary views and attitudes into which my uncriticized freedom always leads me, and become responsible, that is, able to respond. It is only then that I see the need of justifying my egocentric attitudes, and of doing justice to the other in my thought and in my action.

by Peter Gabriel 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urEbRC3PSY4

So much unfinished business
All sticky with desire
Raking through the empty shells
Of all the rockets we fired
Set the navigation
For the Earth all warm and wet
And as the longing drops away
The compass is reset
Oh, there's so much to aim for
You can shoot at the sun
But all of it just comes and goes
There's only so much can be done
Time slips in the mirror
As an old man, I was born
But I've grown to be a baby
With a halo and a horn
Burn up like a lightning bolt
All gone within a flash
You look around to find a home
Where the asteroid will crash
Oh, there's so much to live for
So much left to give
This edition is limited
There's only so much can be done
The body stiffens, tires and aches
In its wrinkled, blotchy skin
With each decade, more camouflage
For the wild eyed child within
Now close your eyes for a moment
Look down and look above
All the warmth inside of you
Comes from those you love
Oh, there's so much to live for
So much left to give
This edition is limited
There's only so much can be done
So much to aim for
Shooting up at the sun
When it all comes and goes
There's only so much can be done
So much can be done
Only so much can be done

the sound of one hand clapping...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMbnfxwus0s

from:

Martin Buber’s Dialogical Communication: Life as an Existential Dialogue
March 2020Filosofija Sociologija 31(1)
DOI:10.6001/fil-soc.v31i1.4178
Authors:
Vaida Asakaviciute
Vilnius Gediminas Technical University
Vytis Valatka
Vilnius Gediminas Technical University



THE LEVELS OF BUBER’S DIALOGIC COMMUNICATION: DIALOGUE VERSUS MONOLOGUE

Seeking to highlight the spiritual dimension of the dialogic relation and inner ontological expression, in his work ‘Dialogue’, Buber discusses three different types of dialogues, i.e. a genuine dialogue, a technical dialogue and a monologue. It can be stated that these three types together reveal certain different forms of communication. ‘And even though a dialogue is often perceived as a synonym of communication, depending on the perspective of approaching it, a dialogue may disobey the usual order of communication’ (Gutauskas 2010: 13). According to Ronald C. Arnett et al. (2008), Buber’s dialogue is an ‘enlarged communicative mentality’. Buber approached communication from the perspective of human relations. This perspective particularly binds communication, human life and allows revealing the foundations of interpersonal communication (Duck, McMahan 2012; Arnett et al. 2008; Anderson, Cissna 2008). It can be stated that Buber’s philosophy of dialogue ‘becomes, an existential praxis that involves all the concrete aspects of a person’s life, being at the same time embodied in the relationships that everyone lives in their own community life’ (Tumminelli 2016: 133).

The first, i.e. the genuine dialogue, described by Buber, can be referred to as the supreme level of interpersonal communication. Discussing this dialogue, the philosopher distinguishes its most relevant qualities: immediacy, mutuality, sincerity, equality and spiritual closeness of souls. The genuine dialogue does not require words and can mean just two people being in silence. Buber also mentions the dialogue silence. Silence occupies a significant place in the existential theories of Heidegger and Sartre. The silence provides with an opportunity to have a different glimpse at the world and to accept it. Yegor Bralgin (2017) notices that silence means the indication of a dialogue for Buber. This evidences that in the existential dialogue it is not the  very moment of speaking that matters. It is more the meeting and internal spiritual listening to others that make up the core of it. All this discloses the contour of Buber’s dialogic communication, which is closely linked with life.

The second type of dialogue – the technical dialogue – arises only from the urgent need to achieve objective understanding striving for mutual benefit. In Buber’s texts this kind of dialogue is also determined as ‘soulless dialogue’. It is grounded on mind, certain external rules and targets defined goals. This technical level of dialogue can also be regarded as certain business communication, the efficiency of which can be measured applying the established criteria and achieved results. It can be stated that the technical dialogue builds up partnership rather than friendship. Partnership is a concept of business rather than life. Well-designed strategies of communication and negotiation are characteristic of business situations (Markova et al. 2020; Kačerauskas 2019). 

The third type includes the monologue disguised as a dialogue. A certain paradox can be envisaged here – although a monologue engages another individual, mutual communication does not occur in this situation. This happens because, according to Buber, a monologue does not derive from the necessity to announce anything, or from the need to communicate with somebody. A monologue occurs only because of a person’s desire to confirm himself. ‘Everyone talks to himself’ in the monologue (Buber 2001: 71). Thus, a monologue can be regarded as an anti-dialogue. 

​​​​​​​
poem by Jessica Wildfire:

This world always had to end. It was never going to last more than a generation. It couldn't. All the facts made that very clear from the start. The rich and the corrupt simply chose to ignore that. They lied.
That's not the worst part.
It's not the collapse.
It's not the death of our hopes and dreams. It's the fact that we're not allowed to grieve it and move on. Imagine trying to grieve the loss of a friend or a parent when half of everyone you know won't even admit they're dead. Imagine you're stuck in a real-life version of Weekend at Bernie's.
That's what we're doing.
It's the norms that force us to engage in acts of cultural necrophilia. It's having to pretend for our bosses, our coworkers, our friends, and our relatives. It's watching everyone we know screw a corpse.
Recently, I was catching up with a friend who lives in a big city. She's one of those people who's been trying to act normal. Toward the end of our conversation, she finally broke down. She admitted things weren't the same. People act different. They look different. They sound different.
I think it's because we all know, even if we won't admit it.
The world isn't ending.
It has ended.

Not sure what it means but its beautiful as is ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcbKoY7XpJE

from branching streams flow in the darkness, shunryu suzuki


Student: Roshi, what is the difference between understanding things or activities from both sides and not understanding them at all?


Suzuki Roshi: Oh—there’s no need to talk about not understanding at all [laughs]. If you have a chance to listen to a lecture or read a book, you will understand something.

Truth is truth. There are not two truths, only one. When you understand truth only with your mind, you may feel that is the truth. But compared to your actual activity or feeling or life, the truth that you understand with your mind is not the actual truth. Because our actual life is not as easy as our thinking, it is easy to be convinced that some idea we have is the perfect truth. Yet for us it is not true because that kind of thinking does not accord with our actual life.

So there are two ways of understanding the truth. One way is intellectual truth. “We understand,” we say, but that understanding is just an intellectual understanding. Whether we understand it or not, truth is truth—whether Buddha appeared in this world or not, truth is truth. In the second way, something may be true for a buddha or an enlightened person, but for us it is not true. We cannot accept the fundamental truth as it is, so for us it does not seem true. That is the truth we work with in our practice. From the viewpoint of our practice, truth is not always true.

I can not see a way to see if any of this is real or unreal, hence if it's true or not true. 

I can say much about it but really, I can not be certain. 

What is "fundamentally true" ? 

You say "for an enlightened person" it is true? What is true? That I'm utterly uncertain and have no clue what comes next? That THIS is morphing into shapes already gone not even sure if they ever existed? And who is to say "yes that really existed"? The memory? Can one trust dead knowledge? I would not bet on that horse!  

 I can not see a way to see if any of this is real or unreal, hence if it's true or not true. 

————

Much like descartes, who couldn’t tell if he was existing as a man or merely a brain in a vat dreaming. He took radical doubt as his standpoint.

———————

I can say much about it but really, I can not be certain. 


————————


You think, thus, you are. Cogito ergo sum. Certainment.

Descartes found certainty in the ontological argument of all places. What this means is that, because we can conceive of the inconceivable, because infinity is conceivable as such but infinitely beyond our grasp, there is being which is beyond our totality of existence. So to speak. The source of being, the mother of being. 

Alterity, the infinite other. Real but not “us.” Ever void of anything like us. The source of us. Nameless. Call it “the way.” However big our universe is, infinity is incomparably greater.


————————

What is "fundamentally true" ? 


———————

Oooh, hold that thought!

I have an answer, and it goes, “I don’t know!”

Sounds like a copout I know, but it is the truth.

What roshi is talking about is the self evident truth that everything expresses all the time. Humans are by and large bullshitting hypocrites but their actions speak for themselves. They say “I am this” and “I am that” and you will be punished if you don’t pretend to believe it, like in the emperor’s new clothes, or trump’s party. Or medicine, or law enforcement. Social media. Spiritual forums.

Our spiritual practice is aspirational. We practice enlightenment, as best we can. We empty our consciousness of the superficial and mundane and pursue the pure consciousness of unfettered mind.

Perhaps we succeed occasionally and manage to forget our bodies and minds for some moments but as soon as we remember ourselves those moments are forgotten, their emptiness idealized as fullness.

Bra, what is “fundamentally true” can not be thought, let alone explained, yet it can be known by “the enlightened person.” 

What “can be known”? Can’t be explained. The explanation fundamental to western culture is that of plotinus. The original emanation is known as “the one.” From the one comes the intellect, which includes everything that can be known. From the intellect comes the soul, the knower and the basis for all individual experience. 

The goal of the meditator is to climb this ladder out of the sublunary sphere into the higher spheres, become one with the one, which is what we truly are.


———————


You say "for an enlightened person" it is true? What is true? That I'm utterly uncertain and have no clue what comes next? That THIS is morphing into shapes already gone not even sure if they ever existed? And who is to say "yes that really existed"? The memory? Can one trust dead knowledge? I would not bet on that horse! emoticon 


—————————


The enlightened person, the buddha, comes into focus because our assumption that the individual ego is who we are is fundamentally wrong. The ego is a grammatical convenience, a fiction. We always feel guilty about it, knowing we should have the interests of all of sentient being at heart and not the interest of an individual. This is the source of all our lies and hypocrisy.

In the absence of denial, the truth is self evident.


The roshi is aware that especially aspirants are trapped in words. We are what we are and don’t need to aspire to being human, we just need to be ourselves, be authentic. But we can’t do that because we believe we need to be better than we are, and we imagine we can become better through effort. Nononnonononnonnnnooooooo!!!!!! This is like trying to solve climate change through more technology. 

We want to evolve. This is not something that can be done at speed. It is not individual evolution that is significant, but all of evolution. 

It is not our greater competence at repeating words and ideas that makes us enlightened, but our actual being. The more wordlessly that being expresses enlightenment, the more enlightened it is.

What is authentic being, true being? The truth? This! self evident facticity of being. Unfiltered, unjudged, spontaneous, innocent, free and full of the natural courage of the pure unidentified wholly alive aware being one with all and in awe and wonder of the more than all.

Look to nature, what is left of it. Natural predators take the weak, the old, the sick and strengthen the prey as a species, good for all. Humans take the biggest and strongest, the one with the largest trophy horns or head, and destroy ecosystems in evolutionary instants.

Selfishness and greed are the problem, individually and collectively. It is far easier to pretend than to change, and if the only metric is how people perceive us, then why do all the hard work when you can fake it? We so easily convince ourselves, because we are biologically predisposed to seek approval and use that as a prop for confidence. Credibility induces confidence and a hypocrite is born. The more desperate people are to believe the easier they are to fool; believers are by nature foolish, or children.


Sit in meditation. Your heart beats, your lungs inflate and deflate. Mind empty, you have no doubts. Just breath. Perceptions. Presence. All real, bra. No doubts. Words are a trap for meaning. Without meaning, words are meaningless. 

from alterity and transcendence by emmanuel levinas…



 In the intuition of truth, knowledge is described as a fulfilling, as the satisfying of an aspira­tion toward the object. A grasping of being equivalent to the constitution of that being: the transcendental reduction, in suspending all independence in being other than that of consciousness itself, allows us to recover that being suspended as noema or noesis and leads us —or is supposed to lead us —to the full consciousness of self affirming itself as absolute being, confirming itself as an I who identifies himself through all the differences, ‘Master of himself, just as he is master of the universe,’ and capable of shedding light in all the shadowy corners in which that mastery of the I would be contested. If the constituting I runs up against a sphere in which he finds himself bodily intertwined with what he constituted, he is there in the world as if in his skin, in accordance with the intimacy of the incarnation that no longer has the exteriority of the objective world.

But a reduced consciousness —which, in reflection on itself rejoins and masters, like objects in the world, its own acts of perception and knowledge, and thus confirms self-consciousness and absolute being - also remains, as if supplementarily, non-intentional consciousness of itself, without any voluntary aim; non-intentional consciousness acting as knowledge, unbeknownst to itself, of the active I that represents the world and objects to itself. It accompanies all the intentional processes of the consciousness of the I that, in that consciousness ‘acts’ and ‘wants’ and has inten­tions. A consciousness of consciousness, ‘indirect’ and implicit, without any initiative proceeding from an I, without aim. A consciousness that is passive, like the time that passes and ages me without me. An imme­diate consciousness of self, non-intentional, to be distinguished from reflection, from inner perception to which the non-intentional would be apt to become the inner object, or which reflection would be tempted to replace in order to render explicit its latent messages.

The intentional consciousness of reflection, taking the transcendental I, its states and mental acts, as its object, can also thematize and seize or explicate all its of non-intentional lived experience, qualified as implicit. It is invited to do so by philosophy in its fundamental project, which consists in bringing to light the inevitable transcendental naivete of a con­sciousness forgetful of its horizons, of its implicit elements and the time it lasts.

Hence one is prompted —too quickly no doubt — to consider in philosophy all that immediate con­sciousness solely as non-explicit knowledge, or as a still confused representation to be brought to full light. This would be the obscure context of the thematized world that reflection, intentional con­sciousness, will convert to clear and distinct data, like those that present the perceived world itself or abso­lute reduced consciousness.

Still, we have the right to ask whether the non-intentional, which is lived in the margin of the intentional, retains and delivers up its true meaning when subjected to the scrutiny of reflective conscious­ness. The critique traditionally directed against intro­spection has always suspected a modification that ‘spontaneous’ consciousness would undergo beneath the scrutinizing, thematizing, objectifying and indiscreet eye of reflection - a kind of violation and lack of recognition of a certain secret. An ever refuted, ever renewed critique.

I ask: What goes on in that non-reflective con­sciousness that is taken to be only pre-reflective, and that, implicit, accompanies intentional consciousness, which in reflection aims intentionally at the thinking self, as if the thinking I appeared in the world and belonged there? What can that supposed confusion, that implication, mean positively, so to speak?

Does the ‘knowledge’ of pre-reflective self-con­sciousness know how to talk, properly speaking? A confused consciousness, an implicit consciousness pre­ceding all intention —or duree having gotten over all intention - it is not an act but pure passivity. Not only by virtue of its being-without-having-chosen-to-be, or by virtue of its fall into a tangle of possibilities already realized before all voluntary taking up, as in Heidegger’s Geworfenheit [thrownness]. A ‘conscious­ness’ that rather than signifying a knowledge of self is a self-effacement or discretion of presence. Pure duree of time that the phenomenological analysis describes, nonetheless, in reflection, as structured intentionally according to an interplay of retentions and protentions that, in the duree of time itself, remain at least inexplicit; a duree removed from all will of the I, absolutely outside the activity of the I, and that, as aging, is probably the actual carrying out of the passive synthesis on the basis of the passivity of the lapse whose irreversibility no act of memory, reconstituting the past, can reverse. The temporality of time escaping a limine [from the threshold] by virtue of its lapse, all activity of representation. Does not the implication of the implicit signify otherwise, here, than as does knowledge that has been taken away, otherwise than a way of envisioning the pres­ence or non-presence of the future and the past?

Duree as pure duree, as non-intervention, as being-without-insistence, as being-on-tiptoe, as being with­out daring to be: instance of the instant without the insistence of the I, and already a lapse, that ‘leaves while entering’! A bad conscience, that implication of the non-intentional: without intentions, without aims, without the protective mask of the individual contemplating himself in the mirror of the world, reassured and striking a pose. Without name, situation or titles. A presence that dreads presence, that dreads the insistence of the identical I, stripped of all attributes. In his non-intentionality, on the hither side of all willing, before any fault, in its non-intentional identification, the identity backs away before its affirmation, is worried before what the return to self of identification may have in the way of insistence. Bad conscience or timidity; without culpa­bility, but accused; and responsible for its very pres­ence. The reserve of the non-invested, the non-justified, the ‘stranger on the earth’ according to the expression of the psalmist, of the stateless person or the ‘homeless’ who dares not enter. The interiority of the mental —perhaps that is what it is originally: that lack of boldness to affirm oneself in being and in ones skin. Not being-in-the-world, but being-in-question. In reference to which, in memory of which, the I that already posits itself and affirms itself - or firms itself up —in being, remains sufficiently ambiguous — or sufficiently enigmatic —to recognize itself as being, according to Pascal’s formulation, hateful in the very manifestation of its emphatic identity as an ipseity, in the ‘saying I.’ The superb priority of A is A, the principle of intelligibility, that sovereignty, that free­dom in the human I, is also, if one may express it so, the occurrence of humility. A putting into question of the affirmation and firming up of being, that is echoed in the celebrated —and easily rhetorical - quest for the ‘meaning of life,’ as if the absolute I that has already taken on meaning on the basis of the psychic or social vital forces,, or of its transcendental sovereignty, went back to its bad conscience.

Pre-reflective, non-intentional consciousness cannot become conscious of that passivity; as if, in it, already there was the distinction between the reflection of a subject positing itself in the ‘indeclinable nominative,’ assured of its perfect right to be and ‘dominating’ the timidity of the non-intentional, like a childhood of the mind to be gotten over, like an access of weakness in an impassible psyche. The non-intentional is pas­sivity from the start, the accusative is its ‘first case,’ so to speak. A bad conscience that is not the finiteness of existing signified in anguish. My death, always premature, may check the being that qua being perseveres in its being, but in anguish, this scandal does not shake the good conscience of being, nor the morals based on the inalienable right of the conatus, which is also the right and the good conscience of freedom. On the other hand, in the passivity of the non-intentional —in the very mode- of its ‘spontaneity’ and before all formulation of metaphysical ideas on this subject —the very justice of being posited in being is put in question; being, that is affirmed with intentional thought, knowledge and the grasping of the now. Here we have being as bad conscience, in that putting in question; being-in-question, but also put before the question. Having to answer. The birth of language in responsibility. Having to speak, having to say I, being in the first person. Being me, precisely; but from then on, in the affirmation of its being me, having to answer for its right to be. Pascal’s ‘the I is hateful’ must be thought through to this point.

 To have to answer for ones right to be, not in relation to the abstraction of some anonymous law, some legal entity, but in fear for the other. My being- in-the-world or my ‘place in the sun,’ my home - have they not been the usurpation of places belonging to others already oppressed by me or starved, expelled to a Third World: rejecting, excluding, exiling, despoiling, killing. ‘My place in the sun,’ said Pascal, ‘the beginning and the archetype of the usurpation of the entire world.’ Fear for all that my existence — despite its intentional and conscious innocence - can accomplish in the way of violence and murder. Fear coming from behind my ‘self-consciousness’ and whatever returns there may be of the pure persever­ance in being toward good conscience. Fear of occu­pying in the Da of my Dasein someone else’s place; the inability to have a place, a profound utopia. Fear that comes to me from the face of the other.

 

"No One Is To Blame"
(howard jones)

You can look at the menu but you just can't eat
You can feel the cushions but you can't have a seat
You can dip your foot in the pool but you can't have a swim
You can feel the punishment but you can't commit the sin

And you want her, and she wants you
We want everyone
And you want her, and she wants you
No one, no one, no one ever is to blame

You can build a mansion but you just can't live in
You're the fastest runner but you're not allowed to win
Some break the rules and live to count the cost
The insecurity is the thing that won't get lost

And you want her, and she wants you
We want everyone
And you want her, and she wants you
No one, no one, no one ever is to blame

You can see the summit but you can't reach it
It's the last piece of the puzzle but you just can't make it fit
Doctor says you're cured but you still feel the pain
Aspirations in the clouds but your hopes go down the drain

And you want her, and she wants you
We want everyone
And you want her, and she wants you
No one, no one, no one ever is to blame
No one ever is to blame
No one ever is to blame

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xShnM23hOEY

“You, Yogi,” snapped Bucky. “Go in there and hit. I realize that you’re in a slump, but you aren’t thinking enough at the plate. Think before you pick out a ball. Make sure it’s good before you swing. Think!”

The Yankee manager gave his hero a brisk pat on the back and sent him into the fray. Yogi struck out most inelegantly and stamped angrily back to the bench, muttering away to himself in a corner of the dug-out. After a while the curious Bucky wandered down and listened to him.

Yogi was repeating over and over, “How can a guy hit and think at the same time?”

from the ethics of ambiguity by simone de beauvoir


As for us, whatever the case may be, we believe in freedom. Is it true that this belief must lead us to despair? Must we grant this curious paradox: that from the moment a man recognizes himself as free, he is prohibited from wishing for anything?

On the contrary, it appears to us that by turning toward this freedom we are going to discover a principle of action whose range will be universal. The characteristic feature of all ethics is to consider human life as a game that can be won or lost and to teach man the means of winning. Now, we have seen that the original scheme of man is ambiguous: he wants to be, and to the extent that he coincides with this wish, he fails. All the plans in which this will to be is actualized are condemned; and the ends circumscribed by these plans remain mirages. Human transcendence is vainly engulfed in those miscarried attempts. But man also wills himself to be a disclosure of being, and if he coincides with this wish, he wins, for the fact is that the world becomes present by his presence in it. But the disclosure implies a perpetual tension to keep being at a certain distance, to tear one self from the world, and to assert oneself as a freedom. To wish for the disclosure of the world and to assert oneself as freedom are one and the same movement. Freedom is the source from which all significations and all values spring. It is the original condition of all justification of existence. The man who seeks to justify his life must want freedom itself absolutely and above everything else. At the same time that it requires the realization of concrete ends, of particular projects, it requires itself universally. It is not a ready-made value which offers itself from the outside to my abstract adherence, but it appears (not on the plane of facility, but on the moral plane) as a cause of itself. It is necessarily summoned up by the values which it sets up and through which it sets itself up. It can not establish a denial of itself, for in denying itself, it would deny the possibility of any foundation. To will oneself moral and to will oneself free are one and the same decision.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbgTUwUP-ew

From
Sky Above, Great Wind: The Life and Poetry of Zen Master Ryokan
Ryokan


DISCOURSE 

Customs become diluted year after year.
Both the noble and the common decline.
The human mind grows fragile with time;
the ancestral way becomes fainter day by day.
Teachers can’t see past the name of their school;
students enable their teachers’ narrow-mindedness.
They are glued to each other,
unwilling to change.
If the purpose of the dharma were to establish schools,
sages would have done so long ago.
Now that people have declared their schools,
whom on earth should I join?
Everyone, shut your mouth
and listen!
A discourse should have a beginning.
Let me begin with the one on Vulture Peak.
The Buddha is the deva of devas.
Who can criticize him?
Five hundred years after the Buddha passed away,
people gathered two or three volumes of his teaching.
Bodhisattva Nagarjuna came to the world
and wrote a treatise explaining emptiness.
He said he was simply called to do so.
Who is right and who is wrong?
The Baime Monastery was first founded
after the buddha dharma moved eastward.
Our master Bodhidharma came from afar.
It was then that all teachings found their source.
Zen flourished in Great Tang.
Never had it been so magnificent.
Guiding the assembly and correcting the crowd,
each teacher was a lion in dharma.
Although sudden and gradual teachings emerged,
there were not yet Southern and Northern Schools.
In the later dynasty of Song,
the white jewel began to be marred.
The Five Schools exposed their spearheads;
the Eight Schools competed with one another.
Their influences spread far and wide,
impossible to stop.
Then came our Eihei Dogen,
a true pioneer in the ancestral domain.
He carried Taibo’s seal of approval.
His voice resounded like thunder throughout this country.
Vigorous was his work of spreading dharma,
so vigorous that it overshadowed
other dragons and elephants.
Even hermits did not miss being illuminated.
He also guided those living on remote islands.
He eliminated what should be eliminated,
offered what should be offered.
Since the master left this land of Shinto deities,
how many years have passed?
Thornbushes grow around high halls,
fragrant flowers wither in the weeds.
Vulgar songs fill the days.
Who will expound the luminous teaching?
Ah, I, a humble one,
have encountered this era.
When a great house is about to crumble,
a stick cannot keep it from falling. 
Unable to sleep on a clear night,
I toss in bed, chanting this poem.
 

Questions and Answers by Deshimaru Roshi



Question
Can you say that tigers or cats, animals in general, live true Zen?

Answer
Yes, animals live true Zen. And because animals are that way, humans must represent a further development from them. Pigeons are extremely simple, very peaceable, not at all complicated. Sometimes you should follow the animals' way of life, but you must also make use of your human fore-brain. Westerners like to be on one side or the other; either they are all for religion or they detest it - always the same old story of oppositions. What we must do is harmonize religion with communism, American assets with the Arab spirit. If you are always in conflict and battle you can never find true peace. So there needs to be a theory in between. Nobody has found it yet. Only Zen can do it. That is the principle of the five propositions of Buddhism: there are thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, but not only them. There are also the harmonization of the whole and the embracing and transcending of all contradictions.

The Tyger 

BY WILLIAM BLAKE


Tyger! Tyger! burning bright, 
In the forests of the night; 
What immortal hand or eye, 
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies. 
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat.
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp.
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears 
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Excerpt From
Ahead of All Parting
Rainer Maria Rilke



[Ignorant before the heavens of my life]

  
    Ignorant before the heavens of my life,

    I stand and gaze in wonder. Oh the vastness

    of the stars. Their rising and descent. How still.

    As if I didn’t exist. Do I have any

    share in this? Have I somehow dispensed with

    their pure effect? Does my blood’s ebb and flow

    change with their changes? Let me put aside

    every desire, every relationship

    except this one, so that my heart grows used to

    its farthest spaces. Better that it live

    fully aware, in the terror of its stars, than

    as if protected, soothed by what is near.
  

  
    

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
by Emily Dickinson

​​​​​​​
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise - you know!

How dreary - to be - Somebody!
How public - like a Frog -
To tell one's name - the livelong June -
To an admiring Bog!

[goes out comes back]
BY KOBAYASHI ISSA
TRANSLATED BY ROBERT HASS
​​​​​​​
Goes out,
comes back—
      the love life of a cat.

It suits the generous man to give money,

  but truly the generosity of the lover

  is to surrender his soul.

  If you give bread for God’s sake,

  you will be given bread in return;

  if you give your life for God’s sake,

  you will be given life in return.

  

Excerpt From
Rumi
Camille Adams Helminski