The-universe-is-all-in-your-head

Buddhism is the cultural frame

2010-01-25T11:40:00.006-05:00

This one of those topics that just doesn't go away. Western Buddhists continue to say stuff about their spiritual identity in relation to their host culture. The host culture happens to be the one I find myself in. After staring at the sky for several minutes last night, something popped into my head while watching the crows take on a super-real aspect against the twilight sky. Buddhism is the cultural container of enlightenment in the East. It's not the only one either. I think a lot of the religious movements of the East are exactly that: containers of Enlightenment.

Enlightenment has happened lots of times in different times and places. Of course, I'm speaking outside of the opinion that all are enlightened. We'll leave that to another time (it's probably already in the past). For instance, Christ very well could have been enlightened. Why not right? Same with Muhammad and any of the Indian masters of Hinduism or all of the rest of them that spring from India (no disrespect intended). The shamans and medician men of all the tribes-people of the world all share from the same root.

So where did the Western container of enlightenment go? Did we kill it off with the Cathars? Was it forced into obsolecence with the Orders of Christian monks and nuns? Or was it hidden with the Freemasons and other occult groups? We don't even have a form of dress that denotes enlightenment. If we did, it certainly has missed my notice. Culturally, I think there's good reason why we're looking to import these symbols from foreign cultures. If it did exist somewhere and was fairly accessible, I suspect seekers wouldn't be out there chasing enlightenment from other cultures. Maybe Christianity just isn't sexy enough?? Maybe we're all crazy enough to chase something exotic (just because it appears to be so).

Perhaps the big dilemma is that Buddhism has people that have found clarity and that's what we are really looking for ourselves. The attractive part is the package that it comes in. We find all kinds of old stories that we begin to identify with like the seeker who chases after the master at any cost. Just listen to some podcasts and you'll find people that identified and executed the behaviour. Is this worthwhile? Well, that's not for me to answer. I've never done it. There's lots of people who became monastics to practice more fully. This identity is also evidence of the cultural container. I admire those that go for full ordination but somewhere in my relative make-up, I know that any cultural container is a bit of a mistake.

The reason I came to Buddhism is that at one point, I was very close to the views of Buddhism. I spent a lot of time in meditation and came up with some of the same content. I look back to this time in my life as the period where "I had it all together": well, at least mentally. Financially I was too broke to pay attention and wasn't eating too well. Some of that was fuel for whatever level of realization I saw then.

I continue to feel a bit dissatisfied with the cults that surround a living or dead master. The crowd distorts and confuses the simplicity of the message. I guess that's been my understanding for a long time now.

So is Buddhism inherently wrong? Well, you decide for yourself. I think its fine. It'll change as it passes through everyones practice. There's nothing to do for or against it but understand it as it currently is. Make it for yourself, the self-made raft will deliver the self out of the frame.

Mara as an excellent representation of endless discursive thought

2010-01-11T08:18:00.007-05:00

In my current practice of watching thoughts go as they come and touching the present moment, I happened on an old image that works very well. It's probably why it's still around :). A good way to get to the present moment is to label the behaviour or thought pattern. It could be done as easily as just call it: thinking, obsessing, angry dream, utopia. From where I sit, the label-making takes up as much space as the thought itself so it doesn't help me that much. But giving similar thoughts the same name does help. Mara happens to encompass lots of mind-stuff. Well, at least in my mind!!

So why do I try to get back to the present moment. Well, using my handy, dandy conceptual framework; it just feels right. When there's no thoughts in mind (or a few passing through), everything is ok. When there's endless thoughts, it really depends on the nature of thoughts. The best kind of thoughts, from my experience, are the ones that are barely there. The kind of thing where it's closer to a feeling. It's more like a colour filter on the mind than it is a thought. Even ones that kind of have a dark colour to them, they are far more enjoyable than an angry thought dream.

The wheel of suffering above really states it nicely and makes a good label. There's lots of symbolic story telling here. As I've come to know the image, it makes a good teaching device as well as nice wall art! Mara, who encapsulates the entire wheel could be seen as the embodiment of the wheel of pain. Mara sometimes is understood as ignorance or delusion. It leads to all kinds of crazy crap that's depicted in the wheel. In the Buddha's enlightenment story, he "defeats" Mara and all the stuff that Mara shows him.

So during sitting, as thought appears, we can just say Mara. That gives us something simple to do that, hopefully, doesn't spin us off into other universes of thought. When Mara doesn't exist, neither does the wheel of suffering.

Thanks Eckhart

2009-12-28T14:21:00.002-05:00

The place my personal story meets up with spirituality of any sort that has made a difference was with the New Age books and talks. I regard each author and teacher on their own merits but I do tread with some trepidation as usually New Age folks don't have a tradition that keeps them grounded. If they have found some truth, usually they don't need the tradition. If there is a tradition, it does help to validate philosophies that are out there.

The thing that has been a bit troublesome getting into Buddhism is how things are worded. There's a ton of great stuff in there that just needs a little context. For instance, I've seen the six perfections as something to attain when that understanding is completely backwards. Sometimes it helps to have stuff spelled out for ya. I'm not always the sharpest knive in the drawer so coming to these relational things, I don't always make the connection.

Something like the six perfections is a description of how being is expressed when there isn't a bunch of crap in the way. By crap, I mean ego, dinner plans, mental complaining, tv, and the rest of it.

Relations, Conditions, Transformation

2009-11-06T08:22:00.002-05:00

In thinking about relational existence (I am a body, I move around the world), if you consider the past expressing itself without a sense of "selfness" the thought process, and perhaps reality transforms.

So take all of space and all its forms there are conditions by which the world came to be and we can read about this in science and other religions everywhere; of course, it's better to formulate this for yourself. We can take those conditions and work them down to our own personal story and how our lives came to be and see that it's really no ones fault. Our conditions form our behaviour. As long as we are not seeing it directly there's only a couple of outcomes for any kind of stimulus.

So being a related body that experiences (perhaps creates?), relations and conditions we also transform the whole thing on the way by. We either continue the lineage of ignorance and thus create whatever it may create or we see directly and thus free ourselves. Seeing is the only thing that needs to be done. Once the pain or confusion has been seen directly we have a choice. We can choose to let it be or we can choose to change it and thirdly we can let it pass as all things do. Many times, leaving the situation be is the right answer.

Many people talk about being on a path or journey to some goal or end-point. Maybe its best to let them experience that. The only trouble with that is that whatever goal it may be is either unattainable without previous work, and thus only ever could be a pipe dream, or is fully attainable now. Either way, it's a sense of accomplishment that's being sought. Can we not generate this now? The form that's sought is strictly an attachment that can be dropped if we know that we are able to do this.

For some, it may be necessary to have a goal to "hold on" to. Maybe a process of generating some merit during a goal seeking exercise is necessary to prepare the mind for further acheivement. A sense of accomplishment can be a powerful force to move one from diseased states of mind to one that is able to clearly see the situtation.

A lot of the time, behaviours are there for a reason. Sometimes it's not entirely apparent. Many times if you know the personal story, or can infer bits of it, it's understandable as to why a behaviour is present. This works even for extreme aggression or other more severe mind states. Just because from our point of view, a behaviour is seen as unwholesome doesn't mean that it is so. To re-iterate, behaviours exist for good reasons.

The good news is that we have that pure ability to see and awaken at any point and if we are able to see, in the moment, what our conditions have created then we have the ability to be something else. Our existence is an odd mystery. Whatever is done with it is valid.

Solipsism - solved

2009-10-26T08:20:00.003-04:00

I've linked an article by a Buddhist, North American scholar and the reason why I'm replying on it, is due to the "aha" I got from the article. The content of the post is mostly about a philosopher that meets up very closely with Buddhist phenomology. These are topics I'm interested in so it naturally peaked my interest.

I've always been a big adherent of Solipsism in that I've seen it as the only relational system that seemed to make sense - from my thoughts. The "Aha" in this article was that Solipsism only takes place in the recounting of a past moment. The fact that we can only see from our own experience is only grasped at the time of conceptualization. When in direct experience, there's only this experience. For that matter, the whole basis of self/other can only be conceptual. In the moment we are playing out our habits and conditions.

The Hardened Religious

2009-10-16T19:03:00.002-04:00

I think this is a view we all suffer from. Once you get baptised, take refuge, or whatever other initiatory rite we may take, we find ourselves identifying and defending. I guess what I've come to is that our religious systems shouldn't be something we draw lines between. To me, it's more like speaking different languages. They can be translated and it takes quite an understanding to do this work.

The views that scare me the most are the ones that are hardened down to the point where the person holding them are willing to kill because the non-adherents are damned anyway. This kind of identification is naturally prone to hierarchy building as there will always be greater and lesser. Someone has to make the decisions right? In that whole process one is measuring and bowing to the greater and ever seeking the fame of the top.

Aren't we all capable of our own decisions? We all know what's right from our experience. Do we need to treat each other as higher and lower? We know that every person is born equal. We're nothing more than humans on the way to death and it all hurts sometimes. Is it possible to treat each other with respect and equality? It seems that the world moves so quickly that we attach to these designations very quickly in reliance on others to do what we know that we can do with a little trust in oneself. Besides, can you truly prove your senses are telling you the truth? (Sorry, my inner existentialist needed some exercise).

A song while dreaming

2009-07-21T13:00:00.004-04:00

A kids show song got stuck in my head. In the morning, this is what it turned into. Thanks Foofa!

Who thinks these thoughts, where do they go?

Who thinks these thoughts; some kind of animal?

Who thinks these thoughts, where do they go?

Who thinks these thoughts; who am I? I don't know.

The indestructable

2009-07-13T11:08:00.002-04:00

The only thing that cannot be disproven by one view or another is that reality can only be understood by the observer. The observers view is only valid from within the observers understanding. There are truths we can agree on and the world does indeed exist from it's own side, but ultimatlely constructed by mind. Like all my other late posts, mind simply is the fertile ground for phenomena. Both are needed to create reality.

What I'm after here is that even if someone is wrong, this "wrongness" can only be experienced under changing conditions where the wrongness is highlighted. For instance, I say that a given formula is correct like this one 1 = 0. I have some strange way of rendering truth out of this. At that moment, this is truth. It's invalidity won't come to light until there's something/someone else that dances into existence to show that 1 = 1.

On the outer view, we have our relative person. She has a mother, a car, a job. Lots of stuff we can agree on. When we enter the inner world of our subject, what her car or job means to her is something that we may not be able to see but we may be able to understand.

For the next level, we have to look directly at mind. I guess I've been at this threshold for some time. I feel like I've belaboured it a bit over the last couple of posts but I'm still trying to get the habit for myself.

When we look at how we look at our subject's car and how we define it; it become hard to define. To show this, ask yourself "what does a car mean?" We can talk about all the component parts but until we consider any one object independent of it's components we will continue to talk about parts. In order to answer our question we have to look at our minds. What does the car mean. We kinda get lost in our definitions here. They tend to wash away to nothing. We see how the mind is underneath it. It just seems to do this, but theres no-thing. No matter what appears and in what way, this mind of ours just does its thing. Continually cognizing our objects.

So here's an open question: If mind is like space and anything can fit in it and like light in that it make everything "visible", if death is conditional on a body, then, in some way, is there some continuance?

The spectra of definition

2009-07-10T08:11:00.002-04:00

While regarding any given definition one has to consider that when making the defintion one makes a duality. This goes to the idea of "appearance making". While meditating, while one is experiencing concentration on the mind we find that definitions arise and fall away. While we usually use our mind to bring up objects that we can agree on with others and perform the actions of our day to day lives. During meditation we get let our definitions go.

When a defintion comes up, it produces duality. So if we look at a tree we can agree the appearance is a tree. There's lots of stuff out there that is not-tree. If we consider that the definition can include all of existence perhaps we can say that anything can have a measure of tree-ness. So instead of saying: is tree? Yes or No. We can say is tree 1 or 1.2 or 0. Of course this is a spectrum between 1 and 0 where 1 is definitely a tree and 0 is definitely not a tree.

I'm digressing from the point though. The spectrum of a phenomena is simply a concept to loosen the ties of duality. When everything happens in empty space (and it does), every definition conditions our experience. Is empty space perhaps intelligent? I don't know, but it certainly is creative!

If we accept that reality is strictly understood by our perception and our perception can be that of empty and creative space; perhaps this whole thing is our perception.

As much this article posits a self, let me interject the opposite. As much as a definition requires the mind to exist, the mind cannot create without the definition. So this empty creative space may exist on its own but without defintions how would one tell? Our mind goes out to welcome the world and the world comes out to meet the mind. Splitting the two is just another defintion.

Be patient, it will pass.

The Double Bind

2009-06-11T16:53:00.004-04:00

There's a really odd bind we're all in. In order to "get away" from our situation and into something new, or different, we have to break two bonds. So far as I can tell there's only one way out.

So the first bond is the causes and conditions that we are all privvy to by birth. All of our impressions and understandings being formed by our learned notions. Now, we don't have to think about "previous lives" here, but we can if it suits you. For the contemporary thinker, we have only this life to gain our impressions.

That's the first bind. Our impressions bind us to the understandings of our world. Theoretically we could all be in The Matrix and all our understandings have been manipulated by a giant computer simulation in order to take our electricity that we generate. The basis remains the same. We can't escape our understandings.

The second bind is that any escape that we could devise would be on the basis of our ideas of escape that we've learned. Somehow we've understood this as good and what we have as bad. Well, I have to point everyone off to the the Three Marks of Existence at this point. The funny thing is that our escape is conditioned by our previous existence and therefore can't be an escape. How frusterating!! There's no escape!

Through all this conditioning, we always have a choice. We can choose to suffer more or do actions that will precipitate suffering or we can do something new. This is the way out.

The good news is there's no difference between samsara and nirvana. Good luck friends.

Life (?)

2009-05-05T09:06:00.003-04:00

Experience is a ceaselessly changing interplay of senses

Meaning is simply a feeling, no matter how elaborately explained

There is only mind to illuminate and imagination to create.

Your Obscurations are Important

2009-04-30T10:36:00.005-04:00

So for those of you who practice shamatha as the beginning meditation practice, the focus is always the basic purity of mind. Always looking for the still point and letting those clouds pass. The point is being able to see the confusion for what it is and being able to let it go when it arises. Once this becomes simple and the quick understanding of confusion is present it's possible to understand the obscuration for what it is. Maybe this post is evidence of yoking vipashyana & shamatha together! Not such a bad thing I would say.

Obscurations or confusion is important. The stuff that happens there is uncomfortable, of course; but it should be paid attention to. Allowing the content of the obscuration to present itself gives us clues as to what needs to be pacified. As it's seen, it can pass. Nothing to do, everything to be seen.

Body as Commitment and Vehicle

2009-04-23T08:42:00.002-04:00

The simplicity of mind is something that everyone can experience. It takes a while to allow the habits to settle and see. Given that we have somehow come upon a body somehow, which is a total miracle of perception, how do we regard the body?

I guess the body should be regarded as with any phenomena: with awareness. In relation to the six virtues they could be rendered like this:

Generosity: giving a body to the 4 dimensions (height, width, length, time) for those who may require it; including ourselves

Ethics: Use the body in a manner to the least amount of harm and try to do some good.

Patience: Allow the body to be as it is. It will increase, decrease and remain as it reacts to impermanent conditions. Just pay attention as it flows.

Concentration: pay attention to the context in which the body brings us. Our worldly context is something that must be concentrated upon. Isn't this where we get into most trouble? Where we allow our minds to wander away from our body and place in the world.

Wisdom: Not allowing extreme views to cloud our judgement of how the body exists or doesn't exist.

The body is our vehicle and in some understanding it can be regarded as our first obscuration. Its how we experience the world and how we came to know it. It is the way by which we come to attach to phenomena. It provides the senses which also provide the sensations by which we experience self, craving, attachment, ignorance and all the rest of that junk that we're trying to understand.

Here's the thing though. Without body, the only possible consciousness is the kind that we experience in deep meditation. The kind where all is still, even if it's just for a moment. So what kind of reality is that anyway? I mean its the kind of awareness that exposes the mind for it's basic properties, but for me, it's not sustainable. We then lay all of our karma on it and we end up with our current situation. Not that it exists, or doesn't exist ;)

So the real value of our bodily existence must be like the Hindu understanding. We are all godhead playing a part (thanks Alan Watts). The whole thing is our creation and our role, built up out of all our understandings, actions, assertions and assumptions, define the part we play. A lot of this bodily/worldly existence is something that we wish to transcend. This is the kind of thing that is addressed by the Four Noble Truths and the good ol' Eight Fold Path. The real kicker here is that the experience is kinda like play. If this existence is truly our creation, than we really are just playing the game. Our body is the commitment to the game.

It's been said that "enlightenment" (a term I don't really like), is like being truly mature. I really believe this. This kind of illumination is the one that simply acknowledges things as they are; with or without conceptualization. Conceptualization should be used on the side of too little. Direct experience is king here. As with all statements, the statement is really just the surface level. Underneath all those statements are ever-changing processes that require our attention and bring them to awareness. So just stating the solution will never be the point of realization.

At the end of it, we've already commited to this bodily existence and we are playing the role. Nothing we do can negate this. Ignoring it will only come to harm. It is our vehicle to enlightenment; our expression of ongoing understanding. The way we express all virtue and all vice. It is the path we have already taken.

Body as an Attachment to Reality

2009-03-11T08:17:00.004-04:00

One thing exposed in the last post was the attachment to the veracity of the experience of a body. Alternative realities to the physical one places one outside the boundaries of consensus reality and could make one crazy.

The crazyness could be the result of operating with definitions that aren't relatable to the common understandings of one's peers but it could also be that the new "thought forms" could be bewildering in that there's nothing underpining their existence. Now that I say this, perhaps this is one of the operations of our suffering mind. We create new forms as a result of senses and then the new form takes us in confusing new directions away from reality due to it's lack of underpinning in the physical world. This seems very possible! I'm sure I can come up with reams of this kind of crazyness from my personal experience!

The ability that keeps one stable in a non-physical world is concentration. When one discovers the unsatisfactory nature of a given phenomena, it can be examined and seen for all it's renderings: satisfactory or otherwise.

The Power of a Body

2009-03-06T10:53:00.002-05:00

Some of my mental content has been directed toward the body lately. I guess some of my previous posts point to that. It's very interesting that when we speak of ourselves we really mean "the person as represented by my physical being". For the most part, that is what we really mean.

There's always a bit of ignorance operating here though. The body defines things like how we value ourselves in relativity to others around us. Theres a mental pecking order that seems to form up even though this hasn't necessarily been said, we all have an understanding of this. Good and bad being measured on the level of culturally set scale that is communicated by what people flaunt or hide.

Existentially speaking, bodies are really strange. Without them its plain to see that we can't experience time, space or dimensionality. With them, we are strictly defined and coupled to these things except in mind. The challenge I'm seeking here is a definition of mind that explains both our experience as a body and the experience of imagination or our free floating thoughts. Perhaps my confusion is due to an attachment to body as the sole reality.

If the body is not the sole reality, then how can we say that thoughts or feelings that are not in sync with our bodily experience is valid? All of my experience screams at me saying "It's your body you idiot!!" :) . What I'm saying here is that the body is the only verifiable reality. Imaginary realities are available especially in half-sleep or meditation experiences and they do have a "reality" quality to them when you are involved with them, but they are not verifiable with other experiences. If they are, they are past and well, we all know the past isn't available for live experience.

This is the place where I posit that the body is the only frame of reference that is verifiable. It certainly is the only one that we can agree with others on! To me, this seems like the Buddha touching the ground after his initial realization. After he had spent time recifying his past lives (all the yucky karma he had accumulated up to this point), he realized this experience was not verifiable and called the place where he was his witness. The only vehicle that brought him there was his body.

The body is an good vehicle as it's been shown to bring us to very excellent places. Unfortunately, it's really good at enforcing it's animal influences. This is not to say that one's animal drives are wrong, but we do know that following base drives will bring you to base places. Although I really like how my body/mind knows how to react to danger without any conceptual input. Fight or flight is really handy!!

The most powerful of the body's drives is sex. Sex oddly rules most of our behaviours. I mean have a look around. Young people start out with no drive for it except they know that the body is more sensitive in one place rather than another. Sooner or later it becomes the main focus of a very heavy obsession. It leads us into the lives our parents lived for better or for worse. With this all of the traditions, definitions, sayings, credos, allegences, and group identities are past on with new inflection.

The odd place I'm finding is that the mind is not necessarily the mind. Of course, the body happens in mind pretty strongly. There are a lot of states of mind where body doesn't factor into the equation though. Most of those states are considered "altered", but they exist. They aren't verifiable, but perhaps they are necessary. I'll let ya know as I go.

The Light Behind the Veil

2009-02-06T09:07:00.002-05:00

Objects create the world. It's true that the objects that we can agree on, exist. If we sit in the same room and it has a table than the table can be said to exist. The table has it's own line of karma that brings it to the moment of conceptualization. The table has it's own relation to the phenomenal world.

The table needs one more thing to make it "go". It needs mind. Ultimately, mind creates it. The table will exist for the time we experience it in all it's facets and qualities. Time will pass as a function of objects appearing and disappearing from our senses. The table will disappear as well. As I may have said before, it's not if objects exist; it's how. If all is dependent on mind then the mind will give birth to whatever object based on the current view and intention.

Beneath all of these complications is the purity of mind. It's what is found when all has calmed. When attachment and emotion and objects have passed its only this that remains. The clarity of illumination.

Recently it's come to light that a given meditational deity is a posited form of this light. Even this can be seen as an obscuration. Meditation can be seen as shamatha or vipashyana. These also can be seen as obscuration. They posit a form.

Ethics come to play here. Ethics in the form of Right Speech, Action, Livelihood. Seeing the world from the correct view and interacting with posited reality in a appropriate way. Knowing that these things are not self, impermanent, and unsatisfactory. They will arise, abide and pass away only to see derivative and subseqent ripples in the pond of creation.

Mahamudra and Stages of Enlightenment

2009-01-13T09:54:00.003-05:00

One night that I had a few hours to myself, I decided to have an hour to sit and perhaps do a little dharma reading to see how things were going with this funny little practice of mine. The two books on my shelf that seemed to mix into the experience where "The Stages of Enlightenment" which is the commentary of His Holiness, The Dalia Lama's commentary on an earlier work another meditation master and Mahamudra: the quintessence of mind (or something like that).

The thing I found that was really handy was the nine stages of meditation in Mahamudra. I found where I thought I was in my current understanding of meditation. I checked out some remedies to dullness and some other things while leafing through and went back to sitting for a bit. I opened my eyes and found my mind wandering towards the book by HHDL. Oddly I picked it up and ramdomly opened it to find an understanding in this commentary. Apparently, the body is enlightened/transcended/understood before the mind. This was a really interesting mix and met another meditation map here.

This is a really odd blog post in that there really isn't any point other than to say it. It seemed really significant in the way that everything intersected perfectly without intervention. I was just the agent of coherence.

Concentration is a blackhole

2009-01-07T09:37:00.005-05:00

I've been investigating concentration with specificity to the jhanas (levels of concentration). I've been doing concentration practice for sometime now and I've seen some success. Don't forget that rapture is a changeable feeling as well! Rapture is the first level of concentration. Sometimes its just the cool spot when everything settles, sometimes it's a really big pleasure explosion but as always, it's going to change from one experience to another.

After getting some experience around concentration, I decided to compartmentalize it and then set the dog of vispashyana (analysis meditation) on the experience. When looked at analytically, concentration is like a black hole. You can't actually look at concentration like you can normal life events oddly. In order to see what happened during concentration, you have to actually get into the state; at least mildly. The closer to the core of the experience, the more you have to get concentrated!

With regular day-to-day events, you just look at them and they render information quickly and obviously. You'll get drawn into these as well, but they will produce what you expect them to. I'll have to point you to the kleshas.

Concentration is really funny when analysed. It just brings you back to mind, back to the thing that wasn't born in the first place.

Understanding One's Karma - Make Yourself

2008-12-23T09:39:00.006-05:00

To say that one has no-self is to say a lot. Usually in order to remove something you have to understand how it works. If you wanted to remove a window from a house, you have to understand how the window got there in the first place which is to say that you need some understanding of construction. Some of this you will find out as you begin to remove it. From my experience, I've found the same thing with de-selfing my self (lol).

Going through one's life should be done for it's own sake. It isn't like when you find a personality problem and you try to find the root of it. In this case, I go back and just try to fill in the gaps as to where I've been and all of the things that I've experienced as life. Sometimes it's interesting to follow those actions and thoughts and see how they've come to their logical conclusion. The bottom of this is that it's very grounding. I begin to see the funny solidness of what I call my life :) It's very welcoming though. I have to use the well-worn statement of it being "a homecoming".

The thing is that life isn't something you can just erase. It's something that conditions our current situation. Finding some peace with this is really the main point. Even if it's just to say to myself "Well, you learned something from that; didn't ya!". The really nice thing about seeing your past is that there are some enduring conditions that you see creating a semi-solid personality. Once you've seen the condition, it now can be modified. It's all about getting a clear look at those things that drive you forward. The real great thing about no-self is that some of the icky personality stuff couldn't possibly be your fault. There's real good reasons why these items exist. On the flip side, there's no real good reasons to continue some of the icky traits, but it's all a process right?

Conversation on the basis of existence

2008-12-01T11:45:00.002-05:00

Here's a conversation between me and a friend on the basis of reality.

10:31 AM me: lol. Fair enough... so here's a question that I asked a bunch of people yesterday... I'm not expecting an answer to go one way or the other. If you remove all objects, mental and physical, is there anything left over. Can consciousness exist? Is there somethign still there?

10:33 AM Blink: I would have to say yes, but I think the lack of some sort of referance point would eventually lead to a true death to the consciousness

10:34 AM me: see Nirvana?

if there's nothing self existing, you may be negating the Soul eh?

lol

Blink: well I just think that the definition of nothing is still something

10:35 AM me: let's posit that Nothing is true experiential Nothing

Blink: well I think the consciousness would eventually create something

10:36 AM like light and dark

me: If not at peace? If content? What are the conditions?

10:37 AM tricky eh? lol

Blink: well what would be the purpose if true nothingness existed. if there was a purpose then that is something and we would then be in a state of something

10:38 AM me: you're assuming that purpose is meaningful or useful

Blink: I think any state of nothing would be eventually rejected

in some way yes

not totally sure how

me: by whom, by what? Theres no rejection possible when there's nothing to concieve

10:39 AM everything created is dependent on memory or somethign that came before

Blink: well thats the point though I think consciousness needs something, to explore or some sort of novelty

me: I don't disagree with that

10:40 AM Blink: but then I cannot concieve of total nothingness really

me: yeah, it requires the non-conceptual understanding of self negation

that's not natural to us unenlightened folks

10:41 AM Blink: I think you need to reach that 11th dimensionality before you could truely concieve of absolute nothing because you would know everything

10:42 AM me: nah, I think it's completely possible by common humans with a little effort and intelligence

Blink: so maybe what we would consider to be nirvanna or nothingness is actually more than we could percieve and see it as total light or dark

10:43 AM however I think that it is possable to reach a higher and closer plane

me: nothingness is the ultimate potential. It can include everything.

Blink: and eventually get there

10:44 AM me: see zero point vacuums where particles "just happen"

a quark will show up, party for a bit, have a few drinks, take a hit from the bong and then disappear back into nothing

lol

10:45 AM Blink: true, but thats how we percieve it, we really don't know what is going on behind the scenes

we would have to percieve everything in order to trully know

me: nah... That's very deterministic

Blink: and it's that curiousity that keeps us going

10:46 AM me: determinism vs free will ... both extreme views. It's in the middle somewhere

Blink: well lets face it the higher up the ladder you go the more deterministic it would be

but to us being in a liniar time frame it is not

10:47 AM me: determinism depends on a static history where no free will is involved. I 'm not sure that's the case

oh yeah, time doesn't exist

lol

10:48 AM Blink: well you have to think of what it would be like if you could freely travel time, you could effect it and have a better idea of what lies ahead....

me: but time doesn't exist

10:49 AM Blink: like if you gave humankind the invention of the wheel before it actually occured

it would have consequences but we in 3d space would not even notice

10:50 AM time wouldn't exist to a higher being since the paradigm of it could be easily manipulated

me: nah, it just doesn't exist

10:51 AM hey, can you grab me that sandwich you had last week?

Blink: but everything before it experiences it, we get consciousness hic-ups now and again when our minds make that leap

10:53 AM me: I agree that the state of the world is a giant recording of a creative process, but, the only time in which anything can be done is now. Memory is preserved by karma in that everything is created by a previous state but the previous state cannot be experienced from the present moment. The future state, which doesn't exist, can be changed only from the present. Time is an illusion of memory. Memory is simply a story we tell ourselves

10:54 AM see 1984.. The edited the past to produce the mental set of the citizens in order to get an agreeable present. The problem is in the mind

Blink: that can be true but what of the functions of mind we don't even think of, like breathing

10:55 AM me: 1984 .. the goal is self serving to the party to prop up the idea of eternalism

Blink: and I think at this stage we need at least some past a reference

me: this is the mystery right? It has to remain so. Explaining it is egotism

Here's where I point the finger at Josh

10:56 AM Blink: but I do agree, the world we live in manipulates that to keep us fearful of a greater understanding, the reason why we worry about crap like Hillary Duff and things

10:57 AM ego masterbation if you will

me: for sure!!

10:58 AM I really think this is a realm of our own creation, yet we are created by it. Chicken, egg, no chicken, no egg. It's the same thing

Blink: yeah

10:59 AM me: some things have to left a mystery. Otherwise they turn into ego based holy wars... they can never be solved... I tested this on my office mates... they did the same thing.. free will vs determinism. They always wobbled between the two

Blink: I think everyone understands more when they die, but some of us tend to understand more if we see the world as more of a creative process or a co-creation process

11:00 AM yeah

me: A good term: universe = "The Cosmic Giggle"

Blink: yes

me: I think that's one of the McKenna brothers

Blink: must maintain humour about it

11:01 AM yeah, I think terrence

Dennis is more grounded

me: either way, it remains the same. If you harden around a point, sooner or later it'll break down

11:02 AM Blink: yes eventually a path becomes a valley if enough people walk along it

me: that's really nice man.. I dig that. Very poetic... No, I'm not being fascious

11:03 AM Blink: the ether gave it to me

me: isn't that what we're doing right now??? Laying in pleasant valleys?

Blink: yeah definately, or some sort of abyss

11:04 AM but it's not bad though

me: definitely not. Order has is benefits

Blink: well that and you need to have a problem before you can fix it or do something about it

11:05 AM me: yeah, that's right from scientific process. First is stating your problem succinctly and clearly, then you can come up with hypothesis' to test

11:06 AM Lyrics presently: Metric - Hardwired -"You are everything, you are nothing at all"

Personal Liberation

2008-11-18T10:24:00.004-05:00

So it's been said that one of the fundamental teachings of the Theravada tradition is the realization that no one can wake up for you. No one can say "BUDDHA" and you start floating off the ground with blissful tears, abiding in non-duality with all of the siddhis (different vehichle on the siddhis; I know).

This really is a lot deeper than you may think though. This means that you are no longer able to be depressed, angry, ignorant, stupid or any other of the bad stuff unless of course it serves your present moment in the best way possible.

Personal liberation means that you have to be aware of the present moment, you have to at least acknowledge the relative world and how you got to this place through your past actions (yep, that's karma). Then, on the outside of that, you have to understand and be responsible for all of that ignorant shit that you did. You know, instead of being with the moment at hand, you ran your stupid program of habits and made a mess of it and so it's time to fess up and admit but also realize that you aren't the label that those past events may lay upon you. Impermanence has run it's course up to this point and although you may have been a murderer, you were only a murderer for an instant. You are no longer that label. There's no independent self that is a murderer. You've changed.

Just to clarify, I've never murdered humans, but I am guilty for the roadkill death of one racoon, several thousand bugs and will be a willing participant in my dogs future euthansia if I feel that it's the kinder way for him to meet the end of his life here. Oh yeah, there was a few fish in there during childhood fishing trips. Ok so I'm unloading my guilt here, but its responsible, truthful and I'm the only one who can do it :)

So the real drag is that the appearance of all those bad states can only ever be signposts saying "wake up, this is just a bad habit". No matter what the circumstances, they are ultimately your shit and by being aware of it, you are able to change it.

Don't ask for salvation. Save yourself

Everyone is a Buddha - Bullshit!!

2008-10-16T08:52:00.005-04:00

I've always been a big adherant to the "everyone is already enlightened" theory. During a twitter convo with Vincent Horn of Buddhist Geeks podcast and Mike LaTorra, a Buddhist College Professor I've come to learn that this isn't the most popular view.

In the link I'm referencing (refered to as 'the article' from here), basically the "enlightened by nature" postulate (referred to as 'the postulate')is unpopular as it is the foundation of a person who chooses not to practice. For instance, if I'm already enlightened, why do I need to sit and practice? In this way, I totally agree and I have to say that I think I'm coming to my understanding from a different angle.

My understanding the postulate is that practice is uncovering one's most basic, subtle and complete nature. The article says that this is inferring that there is a concrete self. I won't debate this point. Perhaps that is the case. The thing that I understand as the underlying nature of the postulate is that we are sentient. When we practice, this is what I would try to undo myself to. It is the goal. Why? Well, it's the point that passes the Turing Test. It's the truly creative and interesting thing about anything that seems alive. It's also the point that is non-dual and undescribable.

Mind is described in Buddhist traditions as 'that which illuminates'. It has no space, no shape or colour. Since all things are illuminated by mind, everything is mind in a given experience. To say it's anything or to say it's nothing is to misunderstand it.

In this understanding, the postulate is true. Using it as an excuse is a misunderstanding at worst. In Mahayana terms, it is Shunyata Poisoning. All things are emptiness, liberate even the antidote.

UPDATE: check Buddhist Geeks podcast, episode 96: The Particularities of Awakening, where some of this was talked about

Identities

2008-09-16T09:13:00.002-04:00

Identities don't necessarily include just the one that we call "me". It's a resurgent idea that I've worked with in the past. My feeling is that all things are made of other things and it all goes back to the most basic awareness. And since there's no reference point for that, you could say that it's something or nothing or anything. You need a reference to call it anything.

So if I can split up me into parts, then we can call all these little parts the names that the Buddhists call the beings of the 6 realms. I have angry, greedy, stupid, desirous, jealous and prideful beings that all have their causes & conditions for their birth within "my" time-line. I can also characterize some other habits or behaviours as enlightened, virtuous, other-worldly, and non-mundane. This is a great way to go at it as it avoids blaming yourself and you can see where the behaviour came from. It keeps you from beating yourself up and it gives you a label by which to address a habit that may need to be destroyed or built up.

The nice thing is once you have a label, you can identify it as it comes up. Usually, if you are able to see a behaviour you can also see through it. Once you have a handle, you can let it go.

Mental Constructions

2008-09-01T13:36:00.003-04:00

Your finances, your loves, your hates are all mental constructions
All you fear, all you abhor, when excluded, when running away
all of the reactions that put you here are mental constructions
your villains, your punishers, your friends, your lovers, your enemies
all you hate and all that you desire are mental constructions.

All that takes place in the past and future don't exist. The past is gone, the future can't be seen from here and never will be as you imagine it.

Right now is all that is real. But even now is a mental construction
All the air you breathe, all the people you meet, all that language you use
All depending on an infinite regress of previous states.

The mind illuminates.

The mind creates, the mind abides, the mind destroys.

The mind has no shape, no colour, no dimension.

The mind is light and space.

let go

Questions about Gods

2008-08-27T14:06:00.003-04:00

If you pray to a God.. which ever you like .. why do they always listen but never reply? (Thanks Flaming Lips - on Clouds Taste Metallic).

If the God grants wishes when you pray, is it appropriate to dictate to a God?

If dictation is appropriate, who is superior?

From my personal experience, if one prays and asks questions it seems as though there is never a reply. But if I ask for something important (that's all I ever ask for), then it seems to appear. Is this evidence of reality being our own construction or the existence of Gods who don't have time to reply to their email?

:D

Question of the Day

2008-07-15T10:47:00.002-04:00

Question:

If were made supreme emperor/empress and you were given the entire universe, where would you keep all your new possessions?

Addendum:

What's the difference between this state and your current state?

Stream of Consciousness

2008-07-07T11:18:00.004-04:00

Ever do one of these? Maybe in english class one of your teachers asked you to do this. Perhaps it was a little confusing, cuz teachers usually want you to write something they can look at and give a mark. But stream of consciousness is usually a tool you use to get into the creative space where your mind just pukes out little bits of stuff that may or may not be suitable for public eyes. I'm going to include the results of that below. Some of it is totally bizarre; but totally entertaining.

I just did an exercise like this for myself as creativity is moderately important to me as I need to come up with interesting solutions to problems on a regular basis as a computer programmer. I've linked a article from Scientific American on how to increase your creativity. One of the authors of that article uses the "stream of consciousness" as the core of a creativity methodology.

Usually our consciousness is being edited as it goes out of our mouth or onto paper so getting away from that is really valuable once in a while. It's also a good way to get rid of writers block. You probably have thousands of things in mind about what you would like to write about; its all about getting it on paper and this does help with that. I think this helps with just getting unbound from the strictures of conceptuality.

Ok, so here's my strangest innermost thoughts. I was doing my best to ignore all thoughts of acceptable/non-acceptable and good/bad. So you get what you get!!

spendid silly jesus anus breaking solipist gunk. Inner taking hells in excrement due to aphasia. Neurosis in tandem with strawberry desserts. Analytical mind sharing in rapture. Asia finds locationality in the minds of my inner death. Numinous politicians colour activity books in my bedroom while exploring erongenous zones of intellecutality. Barf is loaded with vitamin K. Get YOURs today! Unearth luminous love. Unload your old couch here. My vagina is simply hidden. Taste evil satan eyes. Goop is the future. Indefinitely yours while cheating on you. When in doubt, doubt & doubt again. Don't believe anything you think. Always love the phenomena, don't ever let it be real. Vision is expensive. Karma is your master. Death is on your side, it just doesn't look that way. Feeling is your only compass. Birth is walking into a room. Undo your pants. Undo your nature. Undo your being. Undo the universe; it's in your head. Dig out the soft pleasant brain by smashing your skull with your spoon. It's kinda like eating hard boiled eggs. Just keep writing. Just keep spewing. Here's your chance. Now is now. Now is forever. Now is never ending. Now is my chance to do what I want in whatever way I want.

Being is not doing.

2008-07-01T08:45:00.003-04:00

Please click the title, as this is a reply to Numinous Nonsense post "A Methodology for Being".

"if you want to 'just be' see how long you can be without having to go deal with bodily functions or some other form of doing. The implication here is that being is a state of inactivity and the moment we have to do anything then we need a system".

Doing is a subset of being. If we accept emptiness as our basis, doing is the most gross extent of being and the result of whatever causes and conditions that have brought about a consciousness of self-existing objects.

In order to be aware of something needing to be done, one has to have the basic awareness (read luminosity), in order for any "system or methodology" to take place. One also needs a history of trial and error to make a system a system!

Obviously, I'm not going to be helping out productivity people anytime soon by merit of my argument. I'm just working the bases of the Heart Sutra here.

Being, I feel, is that strange mystery of "How did this all happen?". Not necessarily in a desire-for-information kinda way, but in a numinous kinda way and being able to weave that thread in all moments.

Factoring

2008-06-27T15:33:00.002-04:00

A bizarre thought came to mind... If you factor out all of the common elements of our lives, from one to the next. What are you left behind?

The consequence of factoring is to find the terms in a statement that are significant. So if we factor our lives for the conditions of our existence that are shared, what is it that may be left?

Our lives are significant in their relativity. The ultimate is an concept to balance against. Is the truth of identity and existence whats left after factoring?

(a tear spilled for our smallness)

Buddhism - heh

2008-05-12T15:22:00.002-04:00

If you find the Buddha on the road .. kill him. Wise words indeed! I haven't read that book and I'm sure a lot of people haven't but I guess the idea is don't get attached to the Buddha, or Buddhism or any other the trappings we happen to call the 3 three jewels. I guess the thing is that you roll your own spirituality. I mean, yeah, I call myself a Buddhist, but the fact of the matter is that I don't come from a Buddhist background. I was brought up as a Christian and I even practised it for a short while in my teenage years. I found some truth there, but I found a giant lack of guidance from anyone who was interested in anything deep. I know a lot has changed there and that was the late 80's so take that for what it's worth; but I digress.

I guess what I'm after is the ground upon which I undo myself has to be directly aimed at the self that has grown from the conditions that my ego developed in. The tools are totally appropriate, but bringing in some of the symbols that speak deeply, no matter what the origin is the correct way to proceed. In this way, the label Buddhism is just that. Everyone has to proceed this way. There's no real static thing called Buddhism, just mirages and images that look like something solid to grab onto.

My Crappy Attitude

2008-05-06T15:11:00.002-04:00

I just watched the video posted at TEDTalks by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor and her experience of her stroke which shut off the experience of her logical mind. You can get video posting by clicking the title. The end result was that her sense of self was removed entirely and that she felt at one with the entire universe and knew, without questioning, that this was the truth of our being. She describes the feeling of the malfuntioning left-brain re-asserting itself. This was interesting as neither were bad, per se, but both had they're functions.

While in non-functional mode the knowing of being at one with the universe is felt and we know we are always accepted and everything is a part of us.

In the functional mode, we are the agents of the universe at large. We integrate our perceptions into language and thought and create new forms; subtle and gross.

The reason why the is post is called "My Crappy Attitude" is because none of this is a secret to me. This isn't to boast; precisely the opposite. I know that I'm fundamentally at one with the universe and all is an expression of it and by helping others I'm turning the wheel of kindness which affects the entire configuration of everything. My Crappy Attitude is that I attribute this as something already seen, already known and that no one can tell me anything. I'm the prognosticator of this and I'm resolute.

Time to let go of my omniscient identity.

The Illusion is the Enlightenment

2008-04-22T08:39:00.003-04:00

All of our experiences can be rendered down to sense perceptions and our feelings surrounding them are due to our memory of past experiences. So the nature of reality is completely an illusion. Our being in it's totality is illusion. So if "me" is an illusion and all things created are illusion then while "me" exists, it can either be entertainment or it can be the undoing of an entertainment that has become a vicious game. Investigate for thineself. The illusion can be used to create goodness. When all the world is seen as a painful game, why not play with light?

Quoting myself

2008-04-16T15:10:00.001-04:00

The world will have to wait. It's all dependent on my sense perceptions anyway.

Impermanence of Life

2008-03-12T11:04:00.002-04:00

Life. We usually speak about our fear of it ending. And hey, I'm no exception to that statement. Isn't any spiritual practice started cuz of the questions surrounding this fear? But in this post I wanted to turn this idea on it's head a bit; cuz everyone knows that a concept has a black and white.

So life springs up from nothing. This happens all over the place and it only seems to depend on our definition and watching of the phenomena. I mean, we can have really tight ideas about what life is but if we watch any object it interacts with it's environment and has a reaction and beyond this definition what is life? Even a stone, with this definition, is lively.

Life just keeps happening. So many things springing into the mind and gaining life. So many things dieing on this continuum.

Baby Practice

2008-02-19T10:42:00.003-05:00

So enter yet another father into the philosophy pool. Hey did some one pee??!?!? So I have to register here that the finest of patience and compassion practices is one that happens at 2am with a screaming baby that you just can't figure out why he continues to scream. Honestly, your prayers are appreciated :D

Tibet House Annual Benefit News

2008-01-29T16:49:00.000-05:00

TICKETS TO TIBET HOUSE U.S. ANNUAL BENEFIT CONCERT AT CARNEGIE HALL ARE NOW ON SALE; Band of Horses, Ray Davies, Philip Glass, Nawang Khechog, Marisa Monte, Sufjan Stevens, and Tom Verlaine to perform.

Tickets to the Tibet House U.S. 18th Annual Benefit Concert, to be held Wednesday, February 13th at Carnegie Hall are on sale now. Featured performers include Band of Horses, Ray Davies, Philip Glass, Nawang Khechog, Marisa Monte, Sufjan Stevens, and Tom Verlaine, with others to be announced.

Concert tickets are $35-$108 and can be purchased by calling 212.247.7800 or in person at the Carnegie Hall Box Office (57th Street & Seventh Avenue). Concert-only tickets are not available through Tibet House.

Tickets for the concert and a post-concert dinner party are available through Tibet House (these can't be purchased through Carnegie Hall). For more information or to reserve tickets for the concert and dinner party call Tibet House U.S. at 212.807.0563.

Online link to more information:
http://www.tibethouse.org/The_News/Latest_News/18th_Annual_Carnegie_Hall_Benefit_Concert_-_Wednesday%2C_February_13th%2C_2008/

All media queries and media attendance requests should be directed to:
Laura Galloway
Galloway Media Group
212.260.3708
laura@gallowaymediagroup.com

Good, bad and the knowable

2008-01-24T13:03:00.000-05:00

I just had thought I that I would like to share. Since I was a little kid, I always thought that one should be able to know what was important - without books and without being told. It seemed awfully foolish that we would be borne into the world without knowing the basic rights and wrongs. I guess I've always believed in the inherent intelligence and basic goodness and primordial reason in all of us.

Fear of retribution or expectation of gain is simply the wrong answer and I think everyone can agree when shown the effect of these notions on a greater scale than the self-impacting.

It seemed that if we were given organs that were hidden to the eye, that one would be able to know them in other, non-destructive ways. We were born with self-knowledge, or given faculty to self-knowledge without going for other means. Not that the body is necessarily "our self".

To a certain extent, I'm kinda coming back to this notion. That our basic intelligence is all we truly need. Good and bad have no bearing - there is only contact and this is what becomes the knowable.

My Self : Another definition

2007-12-12T11:34:00.000-05:00

Self: A story we tell to no one.

My Self

2007-12-05T13:15:00.000-05:00

Self: the unwitting conceptual recipient of labels worn for the benefit of others

Actuation of Compassion

2007-11-21T10:23:00.000-05:00

There's been ideas that when putting compassion into practice that you really could scare people. When using speech as your vehicle, just telling people that you really love them when it's true but it "should be" unspoken. A lot of time there's lots of opportunity to say these things and perhaps better someone else's situation simply by being straight-forward.

The really fun thing about this is watching people slowly take it in. People are really taken aback by honest, compassionate speech.

The really wonderful thing is being able to allow yourself to pour all the goodness you have out to the people who really need the support and even to the ones that don't. Just being open to your natural sense of awareness to the other and allowing the universes expression of unique I-ness to manifest before you and truly honouring it in a deeply exalted way. Just give to this.

Compassion for self

2007-11-06T09:55:00.000-05:00

This is something particularly interesting for me because I have a habit of mentally beating myself up when I think I should be doing something other than what I'm doing. For whatever reason, I feel that a lot of us are beating ourselves up for what we are or are not. We also do this for things that we don't have or feel we should have. For some reason, we choose to pull out our measuring stick every time we encounter someone we feel we should measure up to. For me, I think I may do this every time I meet someone new, or I'm unfamiliar with. I guess I project upon this person (skandas - form), that I need to measure up to them. I need to be "on the level" in regards to a material basis or on basis of virtue. My rhetorical & resounding question is "Why??".

At the very bottom, it seems that we have a illusory gaping hole at our heart saying "You aren't good enough as you are; you need to be more like this person before you". Perhaps it's more like "I'm not good enough because I don't have the latest & greatest item that other person has". Basically, we are never good enough through our projections - we will only ever see the negative in this view.

Just a little beyond this, while we are experiencing this other person and all our projections upon them; we find we don't like ourselves very much. It comes around that whenever we are running this pattern, which in my case is whenever I meet someone, that I'm inadequate.

The solution? Well, I guess that's the easy part. Instead of trying to fill the hole with possessions (physical or otherwise), just do a better job of accepting myself. I should and appreciate who I am and just how unique I am and how there will never be another entity like me. It's all about having a little more concern for one's ego and knowing that it's just as flawed and great as everyone else's. The middle way when concerning one's own being! This flattens the relationship between my self and everyone else's self. Instead of being the central focus, my self has the same value as all the rest. Now that's a new adventure!

My Interpretation of the Skandas

2007-10-23T08:44:00.000-04:00

I am always going after the skandas as I think they are really important as to how we see our world. I've been going after a definition of all five of the skandas for some time. It took a little time to investigate what was going on in my mind that the Buddha may have seen. So here's what I came up with. The generally accepted translation is on the left and my interpretation or definition of the word being used on the right. Finding good definitions for these even in decent dictionaries are really terrible. Some of them are circular definitions like 'Perception: the act of perceiving". This was one of my greater problems in understanding the terms used in defining the skandas. So here's the actual list:

form: mentally selected phenomena

feeling: good, bad or indifferent feelings regarding the form

perception: interpreted sensation based on the form & feeling

formation: measuring the present object with past experience of a similar object

consciousness: integrating the object to the present dualistic understanding of now

Just to get at what exactly I mean here is form is a label we apply to anything that arises. It may go something like "hey, look that's my hand". The word "hand" has been used to select that which has arisen. The feeling associated is probably good or indifferent, well, at least in my case. The perception of the thing is usually where I get a bit befuddled. I seem to think that perception is a bundling of form and feeling so you end up with physical phenomena and basic emotion wound up into a single mind object. This is really, really subtle, so check your mind before deciding if I'm right or wrong.

Formation is another creative step. What I mean by that is once one has a name and form and a basic emotion, all the other stuff that is associated to the concept of "hand" is included. It's a recollection of all stuff that a hand can do or has done and all of the meanings, uses, feelings towards and resentments against the given mental object.

Consciousness is the last step and like perception, it is an integrative & creative process. Consciousness adds the object to all the other stuff we are telling ourselves a story about. So we are back at the sentence "hey look, there's my hand". Consciousness is aware that we are addressing a person in regards to our mental phenomena and asking to take part in that phenom. This whole stack of mental activity is very fast. Mind is extremely quick. Most of the time we pay no mind to this process and it takes some time to get the mind to reveal it's process.

The skandas are the process that creates ego and in this context, the creative process is a negative one. The only reason why it's negative is that it separates one from what is actually happening. In the case above, we've made a story about something that needed no greater explanation. If both people implied in the sentence were paying attention there is no need for speech or conceptualization. It has happened, it arose and it may have persisted or fallen away. Nothing more needs doing.

My Mahamudra projections

2007-10-22T10:10:00.000-04:00

So the system of meditation I'm presently figuring out is Mahamudra. The basic translation for this term is The Great Seal. It refers to the seal of the emperor or king. Upon seeing it, anyone can agree that the sealed item is indeed from the king.

The thing I was thinking to myself was that being a seeker, we make up all kinds of mythologies as to how the universe works and what we are in this ultimate sense. Often we are looking for how we can get out of the suffering mode. A lot of the time our mythologies just get us tangled again.

My thought this morning was: "instead of all the mythology and storytelling we do in discovering the emptiness of self nature, is the emphasis the phenomena that we can all agree upon? Is the rest of the story the problem?"

My point here is that we all have our stories about ourselves and how we came to be and we have all our mental formations that exist when we encounter a physical or mental form. If both you and I experience what I can label a coffee cup, all our mental projections, experiences, positive & negative feelings and interpretations of the sense faculties are all the part of the package that is not the seal. The part that is the king's seal is object itself.

This is all well and good, but how does one verify mental objects that exist solely in our memory or thought process? I guess a concept that we learn in school like the concept of interest on a bank account is a good example. From a ordinary viewpoint, we say that a bank account can have interest and it is represented as a compounded percentage over time and so on. These concepts are backed by rules which in themselves are concepts as well. Mental objects are very very empty and have a shadowy form when compared to the coffee cup.

When we experience only what can be verified by direct perception, the kind of perception that sees only in the moment, only the seal survives.

Do I have this right? I know I know, rightness is empty :D

Ten Dimensions?!?!

2007-10-18T18:11:00.001-04:00

Mind doesn't exist

2007-10-18T18:01:00.000-04:00

In observing mind, it seems that mind is just as incorporeal and elusive as everything else. We can all agree I act as if there is something uniquely recognizing patterns and sounds and shapes and can operate on those phenomena but again, mind really doesn't exist very well. It exists only in that it recognizes, it illuminates phenomena and it is conditioned by the external world but it really has no form. When looking at mind, it simply reflects what is fleetingly available. What a strange existence!

Godel's Incompleteness Theorem and Ego

2007-09-26T11:03:00.000-04:00

Most folks happening by this post is going to be like 'whoa, this guy has taken a wrong turn and is on his way to the that special hell called "Overwrought Mathematician/Philosopher's Insanity"'. Ever see A Beautiful Mind?. Thats unfortunately the place where the protagonist dwelt for a bit.

Godel's Incompleteness theorem basically states that any given system of logic can't define itself without going outside of itself. So you can define the rules and axioms of the system and how it operates, but you can't say this system is about infinity, for example, without using another system (like the english language) to say what it generally means. This is really funny cuz instead of boiling down to the lowest common denominator in emptiness where we split everything down into smaller and smaller phenomena bits, we actually bubble up to the greatest common generality - which, at the very most general the statement "it is" is the same when you go to the lowest.

Ok so on track for my title now that I've burbled my way to this point. I've noticed that when watching mental phenomena I always end up extracting at least a very subtle form of ego to be able to watch what is happening in mind.

A very dense conundrum here. Perhaps it's just me and not being fully aware and relaxed in the moment. Or not seeing that ignorance and awareness are similar here (reality just is, you don't have to posit a noticer). As one continues to notice the noticer (and repeating), we end up destroying everything with the ultimate generality.

Ha! maybe that's the answer. Expounding is cool! :D

Thought Moments

2007-09-25T09:07:00.000-04:00

Just watch to see mind in action.

Karma & the changed mind

2007-09-11T08:20:00.000-04:00

So I've been surfing around the tipitaka and making sure I have some decent understanding of the basic teaching of the Buddha. Stuff like karma, impermanence, renunciation, calm abiding meditation and some stuff about emptiness. I just had a flash of a concept that was kind of interesting.

So say that I'm a hell-being last lifetime. I'm burning away all my terrible karma in my self-created hell. So I die out of the hell realm and in the bardo a bunch of nice karma buoys me up to a human rebirth. Boy, that's quite a jump eh? Now lets say that this nice karma is really powerful, maybe its been magnified by other factors. It's been magnified to the point where reality can be seen for it's illusory nature and a teacher appears, totally appropriate teachings are given, there's no poison or holes in the pot and all vows and practices are held well. As a result enlightenment ensues and thus freedom from suffering - lets just say that.

So, in my story, I'm enlightened (which is a really relative term isn't it?), how does my super ancient evil karma possibly do me any harm? I mean, the mind has been changed so bad things no longer have any impact. Changing phenomena no longer have a horrible connotation or grasping associated to them. Perfect enlightenment would also denote omniscience as well. So you could see the negative karma ripening and taking form. So how could this ever be called negative again? From Samsara's point of view, it might be world-smashing but from an enlightened mind, it would just be another change of events.

In my humble opinion, I don't think one needs to be totally enlightened for karma to have null effect. One just has to be aware in the moment that it arises. If you are aware all is mind and aware of your attachments or at least the results of them then all this ancient karma has nothing to work on. Samsara has parts, so it will expire.

Dreaming of Lamas

2007-08-29T15:56:00.000-04:00

Does anyone dream of different Lamas on a regular basis? Perhaps their teachers, or other high lamas in current or past incarnations? I've heard about this and wondered what that could mean if anything

The fifth precept

2007-08-23T08:43:00.000-04:00

I undertake the precept to refrain from intoxicating drinks and drugs which lead to carelessness.

This is the trickest of the precepts for me. I've ignored it, made excuses against it broke it a couple of hundred times. I've taken this one back under my wing and everytime I break it I'm just going to plant strong seeds of aversion against it. For those who've had trouble with this and overcome it, I would like to hear from you. What did you do? What are the benefits? Monastics, don't be afraid to admonish me on this. Go ahead, beat the karma outta me.

Just to clarify, I don't drink a whole lot. Probably a couple times a month and each bout is characterized by 2-3 drinks. At most its 6 or so. This is my justification for breaking the precept; just so you know.

You are beautiful

2007-08-14T14:18:00.000-04:00

You are beautiful in more ways than you can admit to yourself. The world would be a better place if they knew it too. Express it so all of us can benefit from you.

Start where you are

2007-08-08T07:58:00.000-04:00

Sorry Pema Chodron, I'm using your book title, but only for good use ;). Maybe I'll buy a book as a consolation. I'm sure I don't need to give one, but just in case.

Anyhow, this single phrase is pretty big for me. Let me tell ya a bit about my practice since it's resumed in 2002. I started sitting cuz it was something I learned from a local meditation group in Chatham Ontario Canada. That was all very new-age, but I did learn visualization and how to focus a bit.

I moved out of my parents place and was very close to homelessness. I used the opportunity to meditate a lot, but I was working off of myths, new-age, and whatever I could learn from just watching my experience. I feel that it led me quite a way into understanding life and being happier.

I made lots of mistakes and my raft came apart. So let go of it and came back to worldly life. After college, co-op, and wrangling down a decent job, I found a teacher in London Ontario Canada after moving back from the big city (Toronto Ontario). I took refuge under his guidance and was thankful that I did.

As for the starting where you are part; this took a long time. I had/have a lot of ego clinging regarding my previous practice without a teacher. All kinds of remembered experiences were used as a basis for why I should enter tantra directly. To be honest, perhaps if I would have found a teacher at that time, perhaps I would have been, but I don't have the knowledge to be able to say for sure. Coming to this realization has taken about 2 years. This ego thing still pops its head up now and then but doesn't have as great a grip as it used to. I can see it for what it is.

As for where I am now, I'm still studying some tantra themes; albeit half-heartedly. I just want to finish a book I have on the subject. The thing I'm finding really useful is the sutra pitaka. The Buddha's discourses on mindfulness, ethics & morality. The way I see it now is that I gotta go back and lay the foundation properly. As for worrying about the proximity of death and what I could do with the bardos and sadhanas to benefit everyone greatly, well as Ram Dass says "you can't skip a trip".

So on my active study list, it's Milarepa's Song of the Six Paramitas, the 7 factors of awakening, 10 virtuous/unvirtuous acts, and the 4 foundations of mindfulness. I'm sure I'll be shifting around in the sutras for a while and finishing up "How to Practice" by HH The Dalai Lama. But I think I've found the proper place for my understanding. I hope this has shed light on your own practice; whatever it may be.

Meaning - Part II

2007-07-12T09:38:00.000-04:00

I wanted to revisit this post as there was a lot of meat left on the bones of this post and it could use a little more breadth in certain places. The place I thought that was particularly interesting was the contrast between using meaning, and resting without meaning. Here's a quote from the first post that I wanted to illustrate:

Using meaning about meaning (meta-meaning if you will), would traditionally be called vipassana. This is the place of psychologists, spiritual seekers, philosophers, mathematicians, theologians, and others interested in finding roots to the way things are and why they happen.

In both of these meaning is not used directly. In using meta-meaning we want to know why a given meaning has been arrived at. For instance, crashing a car is bad. Ok, for obvious reasons this is bad, but why have we arrived at this? Well, we know with a foreboding sense in the experience that not only do we no longer have a working car, but beyond that there's shop repairs, insurance and the fallout of anyone being hurt or killed during the incident. Now comes the useful part; the way we choose to render the event with our attitude and actions.

When the paramedic comes to see how we are doing and if we are experiencing any pain do we shout at him because of the so-called "Obvious" pain we are in, do we thank him/her, or do we ignore them because we are tending to our own needs? Why do we do any of these? From my point of view, any of these reactions are probably a regurgitation of some past event-reaction of similar consequence. If we were mindful of our present operations ("read: emotions, actions, other mind-states"), we could craft a skillful answer that was borne out of awareness of our body and direct the paramedic to the place that needed the most attention first. Otherwise we may be reacting the way our favourite soap-opera star may have reacted.

So in the meta-meaning case presented above, if we see what it means to be injured or emotionally distraught at the moment of incidence, we can act more skillfully in the moment. Even our notions of injury and emotional disturbance can be investigated here. Perhaps these things just blow away like the chaff off wheat. I guess this is where you have to decide what is more important - relative or ultimate. In this case the relative will take precedence - you don't want your body broken or neglected.

Meta-meaning can always recurse further and further so at the end you could be looking at meta-meta-meta-meta-meaning. As I said before, it doesn't seem to matter much anymore when you are this far up the chain. If you are able to retain each level in relation to the next, the lowest level of meaning is given greater context. The more awareness you have the less you will tend to cling onto the relative.

This process would be best done during a meditation period. There's so much concentration going on here that it would be really difficult to get this in while watching The Simpsons. Although, with greater practice this is possible as well.

Oddly enough, this post is a meta-meaning of meaning (thinking about the meaning of meaning) and it's implications. Strange indeed.

Meaning

2007-07-03T10:51:00.000-04:00

While conversing with some friends over the weekend, we got into the topic of meaning. This is one of my old conceptual haunts so its nothing new to me, but trying it out on other people always gives new perspective. I guess I do a lot of that here too!

We got into opposing views of meaning. My view being that meaning is thin and worth little, and Suse's view was that life wasn't worth living if there was no meaning to it. I guess this is pretty obvious where I'm going with this. My conclusion was that it can be neither extreme. Meaning can't be the ultimate reality but it can't be nothing either.

So I have to ask myself where the real deal is with this subject. It's fine for saying but for full understanding where it's implemented in daily life, is a different story - as per usual. For me, this points at the nature of how we build our personal reality (momentary-wise).

Perhaps you've run across the idea that the only reality we can experience is the one that is happening solely in this moment and the only concepts that come up are simply that - concepts. They are dependent on the present reality but don't necessarily wholly define it. We can't understand an object just by giving it a name; although I do this often enough.

Meaning is the thing that we conceptualize about the moment. We derive a storyline from it and give it some significance to our lives and so we alter our plans and go forth from there. And this is useful, it has to be this way to make the world go 'round. Seeing and formulating is a basic requirement in order to exist as an intelligent being. Meaning is the operating system for the accomplishing person.

Using meaning about meaning (meta-meaning if you will), would traditionally be called vipassana. This is the place of psychologists, spiritual seekers, philosophers, mathematicians, theologians, and others interested in finding roots to the way things are and why they happen.

So the direct experience must be the operating system for the meditator. This is where the mind takes a break and just watches what goes on instead of planning the road ahead. The traditional name for direct experience would be shamatha.

The bottom line is that all have their function and usefulness. The bases of meaning being realized, allows for new modes of thought. And perhaps these methods could be called "Meaning Processors" as these produce new meanings either directly or indirectly and they undo meaning in certain cases so that meaning becomes simpler, more general and therefore much more powerful. Getting at the root and either destroying it or making it more concentrated.

Ha! I think I've undone my meaning conundrum. Thanks for reading!

Vajrasattva Mantra

2007-06-19T13:11:00.000-04:00

Why?

2007-06-14T15:36:00.000-04:00

I often notice in my daily life that everyone around me is latching onto the "good" thing and trying to make it a part of themselves. It makes me sad, it makes me angry.

Life is so easy when everything doesn't matter so much. I mean, this whole experience can't ultimately be defined. The only time it can be is when we define it in terms of other undefinable things.

So why do we do that? It's almost like we make something real so we can make ourselves real. Once we are real, we can bash all those people with the thing we've attached to. But it doesn't really matter; does it? In all the time and space there has been and ever will be, we're just a speck. We are one of the specks that the speck is made out of. What does any of this really matter?

And even asking the question "Why?" is pain and the answer can do nothing but give us a new weapon.

What is Meditation?

2007-06-12T08:32:00.000-04:00

So I've been doing a lot of little sittings, here and there, when I'm smoking or have a few moments on my own wherever I happen to be at the time. I often have a thought that keeps recurring that says "Is this meditation? What is meditation?". The answer often comes as "anything can be meditation". A lot of the time I find that I grasp after a certain feeling. The feeling is usually one of exaltation and intensity, but the fact of the matter is that meditation isn't this feeling. Sometimes I feel like I'm just sitting there, like I've just planted my butt on a nearby concrete stair and I'm just looking around. This is when the question comes up most often. Just sitting there watching the world go by and noticing the stuff that happens around me and looking for the views and conditioning that I've placed over phenomena of a certain type. Even looking for the views is more than that plain feeling. Maybe that's what meditation truly is; leaving the conceptualization to the side and watching the world go by. No one said that peace was exciting I guess. :)

As always, I like to hear what you may have to say. Otherwise, I hope this turned a key for ya in your thinking.

Desiderata

2007-05-17T08:46:00.000-04:00

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace
there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and
lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to
shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Max Ehrmann

Thresholds

2007-05-14T15:14:00.000-04:00

A man dying
A scared child at a parents bedroom door
leaving the home
breaking the letters' seal
signing the agreement
use of a name
closing the door

All Negative Emotions are Kindness

2007-05-07T09:53:00.000-04:00

Boy, does this title seem naive eh? If I put in context it may make a little more sense. Stuff like anger, jealously, stupidity, pride, and probably others all start with a small core of merit.

If you look at anger (which seems to be everyone's favourite bad-boy). At the core of anger there is a motivation that seeks for others to do what is sensible, sometimes it seeks for others to see the pain they have caused. Anger does lots of things really. A lot of them seek for the target to 'do the right thing'. From my experience, the angry person has a valid point that seeks to have another see the situation as it is.

I've got my imaginary blog readers asking me: "Ok smart guy, if anger is kindness, then why doesn't it work out that way in my everyday experience????". My point here is that source of the anger is the kind part. The action of anger is the part that is not well rendered. I guess it falls under the heading "Unskillful Action" or "Wrong Action". The root of the action remains pure.

If you can see the root, you'll be able to handle situations including anger better. Of course, this is difficult. If only I was able to do this every time; oh well that's why they call it a practice right?

The most wrongly acted kind of anger is the one that seeks to deride someone else. Of course this pure root may still exist, but it's very hard to see unless you have a greater story of the angry person to be able to see it. The worst kind is the anger that seeks to build oneself up by deriding another. Straight-up derision and derision for the sake of building one's self maybe the same thing. This affliction is rooted solely in our sense of self and it's kinda stubborn weed to get rid of.

Stupidity is an interesting action as well. Whereas anger is an "outward facing" problem, stupidity is "inward facing". What I mean by that is anger seeks a target outside itself (usually). Stupidity on the other hand seeks for some tranquility by not minding the outward situation. So where is the kindness here? I think this one is more in the realm of kindness to oneself. When some action is disagreeable one could mentally hide from this by playing the dummy. We all want a tranquil situation so using stupidity as a means to this state is simply being kind to oneself. Again, this is the unskillful analog to real tranquility, but at it's root, the right motivation is preserved.

The greatest problem of stupidity is that one can't solve problems while doing nothing about it. If an action is required and you just let it slide then the situation is still going to get worse or continue to be bad. Stupidity approaches the goal in the wrong way.

I'm not going to do all of the negative emotions, but I thought looking at three was a nice number for analysis. In this case, I thought pride was fun to poke at. Pride is kind of odd as it faces inward and outward at the same time. It looks inwards to all the good things that our given subject has done. It also looks outwards in that pride seeks recognition for the good things completed. At the root, pride values the merit accumulated which is excellent. This could be a motive force towards more merit. That would be nice to be the beneficiary of wouldn't it? In this way, pride is very kind indeed. The greatest problem with pride is that it rests on it laurels. It looks to the past to establish a person worth exalting. So it can be dangerous in that again, it posts the idea of an ego due to past happenstance. Pride is, by far, the least of these emotions/phenomena/afflictions.

A little blurb about ego. To put it in its most concise definition that I can come up with, ego is the set of ideas which looks back on the happenings that are attached to the body. So a statement like "I had a conversation with my wife last night.", is something that necessitates ego. In simplest form it is simply the pronoun "I". When one understands that "I" is simply a convention of speech and not a definition of oneself this is the most healthy. Ego at it's worst when one wholly believes that there is an "I" to be protected, emphasized, further defined and rigid.

So there's my wee analysis of how our "negative" emotions are, at the base, kindness and wellbeing. The difference between these emotions and the perfect state of human being is that there is something misunderstood or something left unprocessed before a response is formulated. Or perhaps, its just that it's too processed and this is why we get into trouble.

So what is your response? Is this just mumblings of a true idiot or is there some real understanding? Please don't let me go thinking I know everything!

Temple? Monks?

2007-04-26T08:35:00.000-04:00

You'll need a bit of background in order to understand this post so please click on the title to get some idea of what I'm commenting on. The title is linked to a Buddhist Channel story.

So now that you got the story I have to say that the overt 'scalping' of buddhists who are seeking refuge in their sangha is absolutely abhorrent. The monks (?) of the temple who should have computers and high-speed connections after the amount of money they are taking from people, should be able to read this.

I'm asking those monks to forget their marketing plan and their greedy attempts at the 8 worldly winds. If you wish to become part of a business school, then do so. If you seek enlightenment, then do that. If you want to practice martial arts, I'm sure their is lots of high quality schools around but don't try to mix all these things together.

If you were planning to visit Shaolin Temple as a pilgrimage, please consider another location until the monastery has returned to less worldly practices.

It's usually a mistake to have compassion for those who are seeking the goal with all their energy. But for these monks, all I can have is advice to their betterment and compassion for the pain they cause and endure.

A Heathy Little Practice

2007-04-12T13:46:00.000-04:00

I bumped into a buddha quote the other day that really linked some stuff up in my mind. It was a a definition of mindfulness and it was written on a blog somewhere. If you're the author of that blog, just leave a comment and I'll reference it on this post.

I've notice my young niece doing this practice and I seem to remember doing this myself at some points during my life but lost touch with it. It's just a daily review at the end of the day. The quote pointed to this as mindfulness somehow. If I had a copy of it I would show it here. The really good thing about this practice is that you have to use concentration, a bit of discipline and it's almost like a mind audit. What was it that you did today? Was there mental states that could be improved on? Is there some habitual actions that could be reformed to produce happier mental states? Did your actions hurt anyone?

I realize this isn't anything super mysterious or deep or anything but I think there's some real value here in that it provides a space to see where you're going and what you're doing with you speech and actions. Further meditation could give rise to greater patterns, how one's life will proceed from your daily actions and perhaps a bit of purification of one's karma. Not to mention that one may end up remembering more of what one does in the past which is something that I tend to struggle with.

Life is like taking a poo

2007-04-12T10:32:00.000-04:00

Some may find this vulgar, but life isn't always what we want it to be is it?

Life is like taking a poo. It's the best when you just let it go. When we hold onto it, it's either messy or painful: or both. When we can't let go of it, we are in real trouble. Sometimes it smells and we just want to get away from it. But we all know that everyones shit stinks and we tolerate our own best.

Cleaning up someone else's poo is terrible and this is relegated to the kindness of mothers and fathers. The kind of kindness we all wish we had back. It's the kindness that we all want from each other. The people who have to clean up poo cuz they are required to by vocation are aren't really doing it cuz they have to. They just tolerate it.

To those small beings that depend on poo, well, to them it's the most basic sustainance. For us to take a poo is the ultimate kindness as it provides food & shelter for these fragile little beings.

Where there is too much poo, it supresses development and poisons the environment. Yet there is always something that can be done with it.

So on that note, your poo is the basis of all your happiness. Don't be shy, everyone poos and it all stinks but there is good in it. Without poo you can't have flowers, gardens and you certainly can't feel better without creating it in the first place.

Groundlessness

2007-03-28T15:21:00.000-04:00

I've found this idea through Pema Chodron and from some of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoches works. Groundlessness and ego are linked. The ground that I'm talking about is the kind that we provide ourselves by establishing concepts in the real world so that it doesn't seem as scary as it is. What I always think about when regarding this is that time is limitless and so is space.

How insignificant is a human life? I can hear masses of people shouting at me from what I think peoples reactions to that statement would be. Lets think about it though, the entire human existence is just a tiny blip on the radar of the universes expanse in both time and space. When we no longer exist, everything we have ever done is minuscule, unimportant and it's possible that no entity will ever care. So it's not a new idea, but it may very well be true. Nothing lasts forever right?

So holding that in mind, what does it matter that I have a nice car or you have wonderful hair or that your mother-in-law is a wily old bag? But with everything on this blog, it's a bit deeper than that.

It's all of the information that we keep in our heads. Our birthday's, anniversaries, schedules, luxuries and how we feel about all of them. Really they are simply things we create for ourselves based on our past experience and how we regard things as right or wrong. I can also see how these distinctions can snowball into commenting on the world around me and so there's a lot to establish a personality by.

So groundlessness is knowing that all of our stuff is simply meaningless. Maybe groundlessness and equanimity are closely related. For that matter, discipline, patience, energy, wisdom, generosity and mindfulness are all dependent on groundlessness. I really do get caught though. I mean, it's all fine and good to be perfect and groundless, but how does one unravel all of those wants and entertainments of the mind to release the energy we have put into our neuroses. I think I'm a little overwhelmed with the amount of work I have to do in order to fully develop any of these lovely qualities.

But maybe I'm just making my situation bigger than it really is. I mean, it's all meaningless right? I'm just creating more ground for my self by making a big deal out of 'workload'. So my entire life I've been creating ego-snacks and it's really tricky to see them when the program has been running in the background for so long.

The solution must be to stay extremely sharp in the moment. The only reason I say that is it's the only way to see things come up and then see through them for their ego feeding qualities; how mental happenings give ground to our sense of I. Not only that, but how mental happenings are only that; just mental happenings. They really have little bearing on how the world works until you act.

Interesting Comic Cover

2007-03-21T09:07:00.000-04:00

I have to credit The Worst Horse for this one but I thought that the cover was soooo ridiculous, I decided to give it more credit for your entertainment. Click the title for the page that I found it on.

Personality

2007-03-20T08:58:00.000-04:00

I began investigating personality as I was curious as to what I was clinging onto in the face of my own scrutiny. It goes in the same contemplation of "Who am I?". I found that my personality is the culmination of my social goals in relation to my world. I think a lot of them have to do with my past experience and I'm just lugging these things around with me like a dead body. They stink and I should really let them go to the grave. A lot of my personality (this may or may not be true for you), has to do with discomfort with other people or the situations that other people present. Avoiding awkward silence, policing my ideas of right and wrong, waiting for the right moment to sting someone back for a perceived misdeed. All these things could be called personality. Add all of the characters that I've emulated from media and little bits of creativity as flavour and we have a mostly complete picture of how I'd react to anything I may find pleasing, displeasing or indifferent.

My personality is then a basis for my ego. I can say that I love pizza and hate the Pussycat Dolls and identify with it as "me". I point at those things and say, "that's me, 'I' feel that way". And so I go on with this, creating situations based on my black and white judgments of appearances of things in my life. I'm creating my world based on preconceived notions.

The good thing is that I've obviously noticed it and I can start with recognizing when I'm "digging up graves" in order to react to whats happening right now. So I'll leave you with some questions to ponder over (take 'em or leave 'em). Does this happen to you too? Or is going back to the past to react to our present moment that should be done? Is there an appropriate time for both?

I hope this serves you well - Kal

Political Profile

2007-03-12T09:05:00.000-04:00

Your Political Profile:

Overall: 40% Conservative, 60% Liberal

Social Issues: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal

Personal Responsibility: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal

Fiscal Issues: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal

Ethics: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Defense and Crime: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal

How Liberal Or Conservative Are You?

Looking for a movie

2007-03-09T15:00:00.000-05:00

Hello folks,

I've found a short film I would like to see. It's one of those film festival type flicks that would be hard to find, on DVD or otherwise. It's called The Tulpa, created in 2005 and I think it's like 10-15 minutes long. If anyone knows where to find this, that would be excellent info. Click on the title of this post for the IMDB info on it.

Thanks!!

Humility

2007-02-28T16:00:00.000-05:00

Humility I feel is an extreme. To be honest, I think this hinders many spiritual seekers from attaining goals. Of course, that's not entirely the point, everyone knows the trip is about the way there, not the end point. Here's the thing though, Humility and pride are extremes of each other. The proper point is the happy medium, right?

One shouldn't be caught up in being humble and making their achievements small and inconsequential, nor should one be puffed up and boasting. We should be able to recognize our faults and accomplishments clearly without wheedling others for attention or wheedling others for attention by making ourselves small. The point is to be able to stand on one's own knowing the value based on the resultant phenomena, with no other authority to query.

One's perception of the result is a direct measure of evolution in relation to those who have gone before you.

Ignorance

2007-02-28T15:51:00.000-05:00

I thought I would comment on the most interesting of human defilements -ignorance. The really fascinating thing about it is that when we are experiencing something we really don't want to see/feel, we slap up barriers to protect ourselves from this discomforting item. The thing I find so interesting is that we know that the item is happening, but we choose to ignore it. The barrier seems shadowy at best. If you were to define it in the moment you could say something like "I know that the bad thing is happening but I'm choosing not to know it". How is this possible? It's a statement that doubles back on itself. This reminds me of severe short-term memory loss. Like someone just put on their shoes but decided to try and put them on again and couldn't find them!

The truth of the matter is that I do this too. Something else I find really interesting is that if we do this on a day-to-day basis with really obvious phenomena, what else are we hiding from ourselves? Curious eh?

4 Things People Don't Generally know about me

2007-02-12T16:02:00.000-05:00

I caught the ball on this one from Sphinx (click the title for the link). I think she caught it from Nothing. So this topic is getting good and viral!
So hmm, I've been giving this one a little thought and couldn't come up with anything that I hadn't told a large group of people at one time or another so I'm just going to wing it and give you some bit of obscurity that I can remember :D

1) I was the only boy scout that I could ever remember who had no badges at all. I think I may have gotten one after the rest of the troop started noticing.

2) One time when I was about 8 (it would have been 1984 at the time), I decided to dye my hair in 2 stripes that started at my temples and ended in a point in the back of my head. I'll never forget walking around in
Wallaceburg and have someone call out the window saying "Nice hair, wrong planet!!!".

3) I was a bit a of a bully in primary school. I remember getting into a lot of fights up until grade 5 where I decided that this path was only going to land me in jail or worse as time went on. Unfortunately, this didn't sit well with the other boys who enjoyed fighting in the school yard so I ended up taking a lot of punches to the back of the head as I walked away from fights.

4) I've always been fascinated with renewable energy. I remember when I was a kid my parents would compost the organic waste (veggie cast-offs, teabags) that we would create in the kitchen. I was always so impressed with the vegetable garden in the summer and fall as a result of this. Before my mother died, she commented on the fact that the compost that we created was so high density that it needed to be 'diluted' with dirt because if you used it straight, it would burn the roots of whatever you were trying to fertilize. At that point, the composter had been bio-degrading for 20 years! This was the root for a lot of my 'green' interests that I now have.

So there we go. A sundry bunch of stuff that happened to me. Different folks will know some of this, and a few will know all of it, but there's lots of folks who won't know much of it. Hope it satisfies!

I Ching

2007-02-01T13:15:00.000-05:00

I happened across a page about the I Ching the other day and I thought I would share it with everyone. I have run into I Ching before but I never really understood how the forms were generated.

So for those of you who haven't run across the I Ching, let me give you a brief synopsis and a link for more info. Basically the I Ching is one of China's most ancient works and it's been used as a system of divination. I guess it's used for other things as well, but divination is the only thing I'm familiar with. Check that link for history, uses and manifold other junk.

So the idea is you take something with "binary nature" like coins or something like that. You give em a toss and see what you come up with. The way I did it was with 3 coins. Ok, so a single figure in the I Ching is called a Hexagram. It has 2 sets of three. Each set of 3 has an "elemental" value. When you combine any 2 trigrams (figures of 3), you get a hexagram. There's 64 hexagrams in total, each with it's own special meaning.

Ok, so you have to generate the hexagram from the bottom up; one line at a time. Here's the formula for getting a line

3 'Tails' Moving Yin
3 'Heads' Moving Yang
1 'Head', 2 'Tails' Yang
2 'Heads', 1 'Tail' Yin

So the Yang and Yin lines are static, but if you get one of the moving ones, then you have to get all the combinations with other lines. A moving line has to be interpreted with the entire hexagram as it's original and it's opposite. So if you have gotten Moving Yin, you read the entire hexagram with the Moving Yin, and then with Yang. It gives two totally different meanings. The only real tricky part is if you have multiple moving lines. Then you get really long readings. You have to generate all the differing hexagrams in every combination. This afternoon I got a reading with 3 variable lines and I came up with 8 hexagrams. I don't know if I got this correct but I checked it pretty carefully and I think I got them all without repetition.

The really weird thing is that it was pretty right on for the last couple of days. I could see how the hexagram meaning was related with what happened. Maybe it's me just giving meaning to it based on my experience or the descriptions are too general. But it's kinda fun and besides, mathematicians can't provide a proof for the concept of 'random' so; why not?

The Strangest Presentation of the Heart Sutra Ever!

2007-01-16T13:07:00.000-05:00

How can I help?

2007-01-02T14:01:00.000-05:00

Ok folks, time for one of those handy dandy question style posts. Don't be intimidated, I don't offer criticism to my replies. That would only serve to diminish the ones I do get to zero!!! So here's my wee dilemma lately. What is a simple but significant way to improve someone else's life? I'm looking for a bit more than opening the door for someone, but less than starting campaigns for ending war. Not that one can't have a small part in those, but I would like to do something that would significantly improve someones day with maximum efficiency. Got any ideas folks?

What to get????

2006-12-01T10:35:00.000-05:00

If you plan on getting something, why not get something that can't be taken away ?

:D

Truth as a fault

2006-11-23T14:51:00.000-05:00

As soon as you think you have the right answer .. look again. Truth is never static. It moves, it changes and as soon as you've declared that you've solved the universe in a single concept, a single theory - you've got it wrong. The dynamics have changed, the methods of God have eluded you again. The truth was never yours.

Reality filters

2006-11-22T09:05:00.000-05:00

I have another bit of oddness for you this morning. I was contemplating some of the representations of bodhisattvas in my morning practice and while contemplating the aggregation of one of the representations I came to an interesting point. In our reality, we are kind of like filters. Our senses produce the phenomena we can react to. We experience and make judgement based on our connection with our past and react accordingly. So our resulting form is based by our filtering of phenomena, our resulting mind state and our karma or lack of it. So we go on filtering and creating, judging and acting. If everything we create is done by habit, we will continue to create a similar world. When these results are placed against the backdrop created by all beings we get a good or bad result. All of this is rendered moot when you look at its origins. Everthing is perfect as it is.

Open ended Emptiness vs. Closed ended Emptiness

2006-11-09T09:19:00.000-05:00

I really think this idea is an imputation of my fantasy mind. I can't prove that when you trail all our interconnections back that we have a single point or a single point that was arrived at by previous conditions. Like the big bang, which is Western science view of the beginning of time, we could say that this was the beginning of time.

Like a black hole, the little, hot & dense bit of matter that made the big bang happen; these are called singularities. They are called this because we can tell that the phenomena happened by the resulting form, but we can't tell by looking at the resulting form what happened to create it. Now we have theories as to how they happened, but we have to look at one happening in order to say how they form. To get all of the variations, we would have to live for eons to be able to see each one happen and even then, I don't think we would get all of it.

We know all things happen because of proximate and ultimate causes and I really don't think there was a spark that triggered nothing to become something. Our world and universe is just another expansion of the dream of the universe. One moment it will collapse when the proper conditions arise and another universe will arise again with all new parameters. Creating new assumptions to spin out new worlds.

View and creating the world

2006-11-01T11:45:00.000-05:00

I have to say this is a commentary of several different sources. The sources keep showing up sychronously as I move through the world. This is very odd. My original source of inspiration is available by clicking the title of this post. Another source is available via podcast at CBC Radio Ideas. The set of podcasts were the 3 part series entitled "The God that May Be". There's a corresponding book that is available if you are interested. I can't forget the Prajnaparamita here either. That happens to be the most susinct of my sources.

Form is emptiness, emptiness also is form. Lama Yeshe Wangpo, my teacher, says this is the whole teaching of the Prajnaparamita. The best I can render this is that the world is a tricky place. The solid and seemingly self-evident world of forms is ever changing and our imputation of definition on these forms is a bit of a lie. The really tricky part is when we use our definitions to create new form.

You can't create new form without a previous form (or so it seems), and yet these things are faces of the same reality - they aren't really different. The only meaning we can give objects is our own and that action is in itself subject to the same chain of causation.

So yes we can talk about a flower. In knowing the flower, we can cross-breed it to create something different, but similar. Our consciousness that creates the mind-that-knows-a-flower is also subject to the chain of causation in that consciousness itself is completely dependent on the flower. So which object is master and which one is slave? Is reality created by the flower or is it created by mind? Answer: both, neither, flower, and/or mind.

Wonderfully enough, all other experiences beyond this one are coloured by the flower and the flower is changed by observation. Both objects will continue on a different path from that moment forward. It could be argued from the point of view of mind that the flower couldn't have existed without mind and the mind that-knows-flower couldn't have existed without the flower.

The light of awareness is present in all forms. Each and every one is different, but same. Light without obstacle.

emptiness and the duality boundary

2006-10-16T09:15:00.000-04:00

More funnyness happening in my head this morning. And with all my posts, I'm seeing that this is another thread of thought that has been popping up so I thought I would give it some physical form instead of just misty thought form.

I'm finding that the mind, when in thinking format instead of just experiencing, will impute a boundary. There's a definition in mind or a mode of specialness that is added on top of what is directly seen or experienced. If you like, the thing that does this is that little voice in my head that has a comment on what happens. The voice always has to say, "Oh that's good that's what I want", or "Oh hell no! Run away, say something negative and make it go away". Now I'm sure this voice will appear no matter what I do, but it appears less with as my sense of awareness-space increases.

The really bizarre thing is that this boundary where our mind says "Oh well that's definately a Schmozzle", is kind of a lie. It's true our Schmozzle fits the dictonary definition of the Schmozzle, but the thing that is in error is the act of identifying in the first place. The Schmozzle only exists due to a set of conditions that produces a Schmozzle like item. Even if these Schmozzles are similar enough to give name & form to, they exist with variation. I think thats obvious enough, but when the little voice names it, it doesn't care about the variation or even acknowledge it. And looky there! My awareness-space has shrunk from paying attension to everything around me to the Schmozzle!

In full awareness space, the Schmozzle is present, part of our being, and yet just a small bit of the pattern of now. Just another knot in the weave; and yet the weave is the Schmozzle and is not the Schmozzle. It is both and neither. Allowed and disallowed. Everything complete.

The duality boundary is the definition. Where is this boundary? It's the product of our mind. It has no existence. So in reality, the one that is not made by mind's fenagling, the definitions don't exist. Look for yourself and have fun :)

ego & death

2006-10-13T09:14:00.000-04:00

So I've come to the point where ego is really just a self perpetuated myth. I guess the biggest stumbling block is thinking that ego is ever-present. In previous times, I couldn't fathom not being a 'me'. Now I see that the me-feeling is something that comes and goes. Sometimes I am a me sometimes I'm not.

Usually it happens when someone calls me by name and starts interacting with me. Thats a hard part cuz I have to go by the assertion that I have to speak from my point of view. Another place where it happens a lot is if I'm doing something and it's really not working at all. I have no problems when there are small problems while living my working life, but when things don't work at all I find that my frusteration will happen on the basis of ego.

The thing I've been wrestling with is death and rebirth. My ideas of rebirth center around the scientific theory of the Conservation_of_Energy. The most basic explanation is that energy cannot be created nor destroyed but only changed form. In this way, the body, mind and speech that I often count as me is a culmination of a changed form of past energy and my future being will be the same. It doesn't matter that all these things my not take form as a human or anything else. These are all fears of an ego. I think its pretty clear, for me, that the ego is a funny dream. It's not a findable thing. It's an intangible mental imputation, but then what isn't?

This is why so many teachers say it is extremely rare to take human birth. We could all be reborn as rocks, gas, trees, radioactive material. All of these rebirths have very low chances of evolving to greater forms. I'm not sure how our awareness makes it to any other form, and perhaps that isn't something I can tell you unless I remember some extremely deep seated memories. Perhaps it takes following the trail of my life and seeing the spanning interaction of all existance to be able to find that. Needless to say, I can't give you that answer. My self-imposed defilements keep me from this.

Phenomena - can you possibly ignore it

2006-10-05T09:26:00.000-04:00

I was talking with the Lama in the shrine room and he was mentioning something about arising 'outside' phenomena. And I asked, "Do we have a choice?[to ignore phenomena]". He didn't answer. That was a good thing as it gave me time to mull it over and see what was there.

When something happens in our 'outside', how can we possibly be unaffected. My present conception is that I tell myself that it's not noteworthy and continue on. Now wasn't that thought a reaction? Did I have any choice to negate it? Even an negatory reaction is a reaction. Even if it passed my awareness, didn't that phenom affect things like air quality (speed, purity, heat ...), or light, energy or something? I think this changed things in my inside world as well. In this case my body was affected by this outside change. Whatever form of energy it took, the body was a subject to that and there's nothing I can do to undo this or control it.

So where am I with my definition of awareness now? Everything creates a reaction, mental or otherwise. Is awareness a mental reaction? Is it a change in our make up physically? Both of these render change at some point but are they open to awareness? Mentally yes, physically I'm not sure. Perhaps this is a function of paying attension. For the most part, in my experience, the body is what it is. I usually doesn't have an awareness value unless I'm in some pain or discomfort. I think I may have just defined another point of awareness to cultivate.

I'm not sure that this was all self-explanitory. What is the point of being aware of anything? Its not like we have control over phenomena. Phenomena just happens. I guess the answer is that with awareness we can watch as it changes and not attach or run away from whats happening now. It creates some space in which to operate as my pain or sensation is just one small drop in the pond of all phenomena happening in my sphere

My Demon - RIGHT NOW

2006-09-15T10:07:00.000-04:00

I'm done with the horseshit of blindness. People with stupid ideas of what should happen based on stupid ideas of what should be. I burn and hate while glaring at the foolishness that goes on. It's all so broken and the ignorance around the result is completely assinine. Can't anyone get it right? I can't get it right - to hell with it! There's nothing I can do... there's nothing to be done. I can't go back .. I can't go forward..

So here we are... what now.

I'll be fine. Just another apparition of mind.

Senses, basis of my universe

2006-09-11T15:11:00.000-04:00

This is pretty obvious and again another basis for the "Brain in a Vat" debate. This has been something that has been stuck in my mind since I was a teenager. It changed of course: I forgot it, it came back and here I am. The funny thing is that it's so basic, so obvious that it has a real transformative notion about it.

For those who aren't familiar with what skandas, or senses, are they are: touch, smell, taste, sight, hearing & mind. Mind is the only sense that is missing in the more western idea of senses. All other senses boil down to mind, but mind reacts to outside phenomena just like all of the other senses.

If you take away the senses all you have left is basic awareness. It's the mind that simply sees. It has no mental story or involvement in subject/object dualities. It really is "the mind that just is".

When wrapped up in the senses, we create dualities in mind. Our conception of our experience is the extension of our senses. Without them, we just are. When recognizing conception, and allowing the return to this basic state, we really are just the basis of awareness. Everything else is the result of our actions.

What should I die for?

2006-09-01T09:52:00.000-04:00

So I'm going to die. Ok, fine, I think that came with being born right :) ? Some people dedicate thier death to proving a political or religious point. More people just die. A lot of that is done in confusion and grasping after a point. This post is after the same thing.

So in dying, what was my life for in that moment? As death can come anytime my death has to be about the moment that I exist in now. If I want my life to be regarded by myself and others to have a meaning it has to be a culmination of everything I am up to this point and what I've become in the moment of my life ceasing.

If that's the case, then I know that I'm not all that I could be. Given all of the interactions (mistakes, situations, relationships), that I've experienced in this life, I know that there's more I can be based on what I can learn from all of this.

Ultimately, what I would like my life to be is a culmination of all of the good human qualities that exist. What is the point of living? To create better situations for those around us so they may live a more meaningful life themselves. What else could be of greater use?

The Strangeness of the Physical Universe

2006-08-22T11:36:00.000-04:00

So while talking to a workmate, over the subject of cosmology and objects in space I happened across something really odd. Yes, of course, the idea matches up Physics with Buddhism. I don't think this is new to anyone. I think Physics is really discovering what Buddhist masters have been teaching for a century or two. Science still comes so close to what I think of as spiritual truth and just as it's about to be realized they curve to some jargony avoidance cuz the truth is a just a bit too scary to prove.

So what I happened across was one of 2 truths. Those are Absolute and Relative truths. The Absolute is that everything is void, or really has no definition. Everything when viewed from the broad scale has no meaning.

So in Physics, energy equates to the ultimate and Absolute truth. Everything is energy, energy is neither created nor destroyed; it only changes from (one of Neutons laws). The really funny thing is that even a complete vacuum, where there are no particles of anything, has an energy field. So, answer me this, if everything is energy and it can't be destroyed, how does any of our theories operate. What is it that imparts relative meaning on anything? It's not the universe that creating meaning -- its us.

Missing Blog!

2006-08-17T16:27:00.000-04:00

Has anyone heard from Soen Joon Sunim who publishes the blog Robe and Bowl? If you click the link, you'll see why I'm alarmed. Soen Joon, I believe, publishes a blog from a Buddhist nuns perspective and I think it's really important. I know that she was planning to study for full ordination at another monestary/school in Korea, but shouldn't her blog still exist? I've tried back several times to make sure it wasn't a fluke of server flakiness or something. Perhaps she deleted this as a form of renunciation? I would snail mail, but I've only got the address to her home monestary. Does anyone know where Soen's blog could be?

Untitled

2006-08-14T13:25:00.000-04:00


Knowing is no comfort
     action of grasping
     silly definition of self
      a phisod self-existing to
                enter pain

A barrier knowing
    what needs doing
    yet  not being able to be done
      a stasis of in-between one state
                and the next

Compassion & impurity
    the barrier to be crossed
    is the state of all transformation
    where the void is seen in every
                                transistion

A return to origin, the occillation of self
to nothing, nothing to self,
                         all is
                               all is not
                         all
                               nothing
                               (     )

More Ego Study

2006-08-07T11:50:00.000-04:00

Lately I've been looking at ego in a new fashion. Usually my ego-examination takes the form of looking at the self-grasping, angry, greedy, frusterated ego. The kind that is easily demonized. The ego that is obvious and arrogant. And that's ok, but it gets really tiring keeping after the ego in this way. It's not like I came to this new understanding ingeniously, I just kinda stumbled on it. Like most of my self discoveries :)

The view that I've been playing with is almost Jungian. Maybe a wee bit shifted from the Jungian architypes. The view is: looking at a given situation in which my self is in during a given moment; the most obvious behaviour is usually expressed.

From that point of view, it's a little easier to see the funnyness of ego. At the same time it has a certain beauty to it. It's a real wonder to observe the factors, conditions, and forces that come together to make an experience. It's no wonder that a god would be imagined to create this.
At the same time, all the conditions that make up a personality and your actions are obvious. You can point to any reaction as a learned behaviour that was acquired by memory of a past time. And so the ultimate void is realized ... but it all is seen in our little actions, emotions, personalities and self-importance.

And look at me, sitting at a computer acting out my learned behaviours learned from parents, teachers, name & form, the six senses and reinforcing my sense of self with the writing of a blog entry. What an obvious conclusion of my self.

A few strange writings

2006-08-03T11:58:00.000-04:00

a poem

hurry, worry, sorry
FEAR

scurry, flurry, blurry
FORGET

hate, mate, fate
DEATH
RECREATE

-Be empty enough to contain everything

Hello Blog Readers!

2006-07-31T13:03:00.000-04:00

Hi Folks,

I just thought I would take time to say thank you for reading over all these interally set conversations with my self and occasionally posting a comment about whatever is being turned about in my head that day. Its nice to know other folks are thinking in the same way. One question I do have though is about the folks in Fort Smith (somewhere in SouthEast USA). You happen to make up a good amount of my recent page hits.
If you would like to get stats like this check out Google Analytics. You have to wait for an invite but they use a very nice web site analyser called Urchin.
Even if you are not from good ol' Fort Smith USA, thanks for your interest. I like the idea of being considered for all my funny thoughts.

Namaste!

Talking

2006-07-27T16:52:00.000-04:00

I've found that once we've taken refuge all we want to do, myself included, is talk about our delusions. We want to explain how we came across them and what they were doing to us. I mean, this blog is totally evidence of this! I really think that becoming more accomplished is evidenced by the silence that is shown. Isn't talking just re-inforcing our selves? We always have to talk with separation in mind. We can't have words without boundaries. But even being a buddha requires and ego and separation.

Comfort

2006-07-20T13:24:00.000-04:00

To begin with, the buddhism was a bit of a comfort. Knowing that what I was doing was a good action. To seek after something greater and trying to unravel the mysteries of my existence was something comendible, something I could pat myself on the back for. It was comfortable.

Now that I'm starting to gain some basic awareness, I find that there's lots of moments that I'm not comfortable. I've found that I do execute things that is self-grasping and only benefits me. My view is often of myself in a situation and that I'm not thinking of the greater situation with all involved. I find that I have to renounce good qualities because I just haven't understood that fully. I have to say no to them because I'm just trying too hard at being those qualities and I can't just 'be' those qualities. And yet what is the difference between being, and acting the part? Won't the acting eventually turn into a learned behaviour with a lot of practicing it?

So here I sit knowing that I'm much less skilled at momentary awareness. Yet, I know that by saying this, I'm just grasping after my own wants again. This seems to spiral to the core. No matter what I think, it's almost always about my pain, my joy, my situation.

This is not to say that I haven't come a distance from my beginner state. I feel as though I'm still experiencing this beginners state. From my original beginning back into buddhism, I've dropped a lot of anger, retaliation, opining, frusteration. I think this was easier than working on direct awareness. Allowing myself to be in the moment as the moment happens and consciously letting go of the opinions that just happen when phenomena occurs.

Sometimes this self-audit is so tiring. It's almost depressing knowing that I have all these basic problems. My feeling is: "I don't want to be this small little person with all these terrible habits". It really feels bad. I know that this needs to happen in order to move forward. Or I could just not place as much importance on that feeling.

Eventually, comfort will be regained. As I clear more away from my mind, I gain certainty and clearer view of reality, it will be easier.

The folly of self judgment

2006-07-17T16:04:00.000-04:00

I've been finding a lot of the buddhist blogs qualifying themselves before speaking. The phase that prepends the statement is "I'm not a teacher but". I take exception with this. I understand that Lamas, Zen teachers and others recognized as accomplished and worthy of teaching are an excellent resource for those of us who are lost in our stuff. The thing that I'm speaking of is that the judgment call of your ability is not required. All of us who have a spiritual practice are completely able to come up with an opinion, valid or not, as to our present experience. This is simply the station of our development. Even this writing exercise is a signpost to more realized people as to where I stand in my development. This isn't to be rendered good or bad. It is just where we are. We can't be anywhere else.

Teacher or not, take yourself seriously. Practice right speech, check up with your teacher or others of the sangha, but don't let yourself be less than some made-up idea. We all are enlightened, we just haven't realized it yet :)

Freedom (?)

2006-07-06T08:52:00.000-04:00

I had a bit of a strange thought. If none of life had any impingment on your being; or if it does, you see it and are able to drop any habitual/emotional reaction you've been taught. If your view is such that all phenomena is empty of any 'real' meaning other than to benefit yourself or others; what does it matter about your past actions and thier results?

The really dangerous part of this is that if nothing really matters, 'bad' actions could be rendered as moot points as well. But really, if you were in this condition, why would you want to create more work for yourself. Thats the thing though, if it's truly moot, then pain and pleasure is a matter of allowing it.

Is this freedom? Perhaps...

Tools

2006-07-04T08:55:00.000-04:00

While practicing Tibetan Buddhism I've come in contact with a couple of tools that have gotten me a wee distance from my silly Little Mind. For some dumb reason, I have always been lusty for that next practice. The next sadhana, the next prayer. Always grasping for the Highest Tantra Yoga. Yet, I know that I'm no where near serviceable for these practices. Its really funny; both funny-haha and funny-weird :)

Oddly enough, this is kinda like a plumber who just wants the next tool. For the most part, a plumber needs 20-30 tools that are handy on an everyday basis as well as the ones that are needed once in a while for special jobs. If a plumber wants for more than he needs, he's probably looking for more shop space to store them all. Of course that doesn't seem to help him much.

As for me, I don't think I have the "shop space" to hold all those wonderful practices! And really, what does it matter? I've turned the practice into a new form of worldly life. Boy, good job eh? But to be clear, it doesn't matter that I grasp for it, just so long as I am mindful enough to apprehend it before I act on the idea. I'm sure that would make my teacher much happier. I wouldn't be asking a bunch of dumb questions that I don't have the first inkling of a thought about.

I should just enjoy the bit of clarity I've been able to dust off and live for the now.

Institutionalized

2006-06-28T17:13:00.000-04:00

Has anyone noticed that we spend our whole lives, working away from our natural condition as the animals we once were? Even if we do get warm sunshine and fresh air, isn't it just like watching the clouds roll by from a locked room? In this way, are we still really human? Have we lost something?

Most my life, I've been working. From the time I was 8 years old, I had something to do. It was work or school or just work. There has been very little of my life I've had the nobility to call it my own. I realize this view is of my own doing, and it needs changing, but do you feel this way?

Brain in a Vat

2006-06-23T08:48:00.000-04:00

So here's something that I've always loved. That I can't prove that my experience is not an illusion. And to further this, what does it mean to prove something? Now there's something to contemplate!

So what can I possibly show anyone else that can verifyably be proven? I mean, we can experience something together; which is always nice. If I ask my companion what they thought about the experience, it's going to be different from what I think.

So is the experience the same? Nope, not really. So each experience from each point of view is a different case altogether. Our sense of self is made up from so many other factors we just didn't have control over (or did we??).

Our worldview can always be tweaked and re-invented. Now this is kinda scary. I mean if you tweak your worldview, and it's not a conventional one where the ego is primary and phenomena is not taken at face value (face value, hmm, whats that?), then you probably exeplify some form of craziness right? True, but if a psychologist was to analyse the happiest person you know, they would probably give the state of mine some big neurotic name and end it with - "but it works and they aren't harming anyone". So I guess this is just about being skillful in relating to others while messing about with the world-view.

So I guess it's about re-engineering one's point of view so that you can get a desired result. Building meaning around ones events that serve a purpose. To be honest, it's a lot better than just serving out the patterns of mentality that have been given to us by all our other, less-than-aware, influences (not that its the fault of those giving them). If you sit back and watch how "I" operate perhaps you can see where that behaviour came from. Not that is important, just entertaining. If this isn't serving you, and just creates more poo to deal with perhaps it's time to re-invent a world-view where you can be happy about it.

Now isn't that true madness? Someone cuts you off in traffic and you have built a view where you can say 'thank-you' about it? Most folks would just keep with what they've seen done in the past. Perhaps swearing or flip 'em the bird. But if you can somehow find some value in this it can be thought of as a help.

Now this is more easily said than done. I can say all this but the trouble is keeping this pattern working. Once I've handled a bunch of everyday situations while maintaining that worldview, it soon becomes a behaviour that I can operate out of. The trouble is always in the the installation.

The good news is that if something goes wrong with all this, it's just an illusion. I can't prove that I screwed up!

lol

So what do you think?

2006-06-02T15:14:00.000-04:00

So whats the point of living? Do you know? Do you think about it? Are we here simply for the fulfillment of temporary pleasure or to attain some higher exalted state? Are we whiffed out like a candle at the end of its wick or are we some ever-moving, ever-changing continuum? Do you have a soul, atman or spirit? Is that all just illusion? Did you reincarnate? If so, where did your memories go? What about heaven & hell? Is that something you create or someone creates for you? Are all religions the same? Or is everyone but the people in your believe system damned for eternity? What happens if you practiced at your belief system diligently and it's all for nothing when the truth of death happens? Is there any value to life at all? Is it simply living it for it's own sake? Is the point of life to have children and give them a good education? Or is living in a cave and contemplating the best option?

So if you have an opinion, I would love to listen to you. What's your point?

more Madhyamika

2006-05-30T15:57:00.000-04:00

So I've been reading, as always, further into the Madhyamika. From the previous post it looks like everything is not the apparition of mind. Our mind and interconnectedness gives us our frame of reference that is solely unique by the weave of influences that have created our present form.

The Madhyamika is the middle way. Why is it called this? It's the school that says that we have to walk between extremes to find the path. The extremes that are the big focus is samsara and nirvana. There's also appearance and voidness. I could go on like this forever.

So the state of an enlightened one is the perfect balance. Neither abiding in non-action or in speed. Not of the world, but part of it. Not nirvana, not samsara. Always in-between, each in-between further magnifying out from the clear awareness without fault or dullness. From the core, seeing all, acting in moderation, always in the moment which is the in-between of all situations.