s'moa

from the chapter "committed to becoming"

the world, whose nature is to become other, is committed to becoming, has exposed itself to becoming; it relishes only becoming, yet what it relishes brings fear, and what it fears is pain.




no need to fearrrrrrrrrrrranythinggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggatalllllllllll =0)

excerpts from "an end to suffering" by pankaj mishra

"Trapped in its subjectivity, the self recognized each image of the world as something to be made use of or exploited.  This is how it entered into a purely instrumental relationship with nature as well as with other human beings, whose subjectivity it did not acknowledge.  In pursuit of its desires, it reduced everything in the world to the level of 'things', which were either an aid or a hindrance to the fulfillment of desire.  The occasional fulfilment of desire strengthened the belief that one was a self, distinct from others; and such a belief fixed one further into the grid of such emotions as greed, hatred, and anger.
The Buddha tried to reverse this process by advocating a form of mental vigilance that undermined the individual's sense of a distinctive unchanging self with its own particular desires.  To observe even temporarily the incessant play of desire and activity in the mind was to see how the self was a process rather than an unchanging substance;how it had no single identity across time; and when assumed to be unchanging could only cause suffering and frustration.
He hoped to bring about a fundamental change in the attitudes of men savouring their individuality: to prove to them that everything in the world is part of a causal process and cannot exist in or by itself; that things are interdependent, and that this is true as much for human beings as for physical phenomena.

The Buddha began with a biological image of man as ruled by impulses and desres- the same image that inspired Adam Smith and Hobbes.  But he might have been puzzled by the assumption that the private satisfaction of these impulses and desires would not only somehow bring about an ideal state and society but also eventually make the individual more self-aware.  His own attempt was to reveal how unchecked desire led to the individual's alienation from both nature and human society.
It is partly why he did not try to envision the moral and political order that could accommodate such autonomous individuals and their desires.  He wished to establish what Rousseau called 'the reign of virtue'.  But he did not see it coming about through an abstract political organization.  Although he stressed that the ruler be righteous, he balked at making a faceless entity such as the state the supposed arbiter between allegedly solitary and fearful individuals, who preyed upon each other and so were in need of a remote master. The same delusion that made men suppose themselves to be solid and independent individual selves could also make them see such changing, insubstantial entities as state and society as real and enduring, and subordinate themselves to them.
The Buddha's compassion presupposed no gulf of class or caste between persons; it sprang from his concern with the mind and body of the active, suffering individual.  It sought to redirect individuals from the pursuit of political utopias to attentiveness and acts of compassion in everyday life.
As he saw it, without the belief in a self with an identity, a person will no longer be obsessed with regrets about the past and plans for the future.  Ceasing to live in the limbo of what ought to be but is not here yet, he will be fully alive in the present."

is my head too far up in the clouds?

"things" are real if you believe they are real.
bridget falco once wrote to me, "keep living in the exact world that you choose, even if most of that world exists in your thoughts"
look at it with me from this angle for a moment: aren't we all (people) living in the exact world that we choose, and doesn't a lot of that world exist in our thoughts?

elnombredisponible

it seems papita will end up here time and time again, through her fingertips or mine
"it is so easy to attach to things visually.  for me, it is a fixation on light, on its infinite nature.  light in all the colors together.  everything becomes one.  in everything.
i wonder if i can ever make peace with spoken language"

papita, here are the words with attached meanings that i thought of in response

it is so easy to attach to sounds.  for me, it is a fixation on vibrations, on their infinite nature.  vibrations traveling from one "thing" to another at every moment, connecting them all. everything becomes movement and change.  always...

spoken language has a lot of difficulties.  but papita, it is spoken language that allows you to create those stories for the kids.  that allows them to communicate things to you so you know that the way you are hoping to interact with the kids is happening.  and your new challenge to yourself seems like you are wanting to make peace with spoken words at the right time...
"one must be impeccable with one's words.  one must also know when things are superior to words, and secure in the arms of silence."
ms. frida, i like you.

When we send the energy of love and compassion to another person, it doesn't matter if they know we are sending it.  The important thing is that the energy is there and the heart of love is there and is being sent out into the world.  When love and compassion are present in us, and we send them outward, then that is truly prayer.
In prayer there has to be mindfulness, concentration, insight, loving kindness, and compassion to put electric current in the wire.  We have to pray with our body, speech, and mind and with our daily life.  With mindfulness, our body, speech and mind can become one.
When we begin to pray, we may not yet be good at it, but we will already be able to generate some energy.  Gradually, as we begin to practice the precepts, concentration, and insight, our prayers will have more force, more power.
When the energies of compassion, understanding, and mindfulness are present, wisdom is more likely to arise.  We do not change ourselves alone, but we change the collective consciousness.  That collective consciousness is the key to all change.
We don't need to send prayers anywhere, because God is omnipresent.  Prayer is unlimited by space or time.
If there is a change in the individual consciousness, then a change in the collective consciousness will also take place.  When there is a change in the collective consciousness, then the situation of the individual can change; the situation of our loved one who is the object of our prayer can change.  This is why Buddhists say that everything arises from the mind.  Our mind is a creation of the collective consciousness.  If we want to have change, we have to return to our mind.  Our mind is a center that produces energy.  From this powerhouse we call mind, we can change the world.  We change it by means of a rel energy that we ourselves have created.  This is the most effective way of prayer.
In the Buddhist tradition, we know that praying as a community, a Sangha, is stronger than praying as an individual.  When we simultaneously practice sending spiritual energy, then that energy is magnified and much more effective.
We pray, but sometimes we may have a situation that is very difficult and we need a stronger energy.  The individual energy we can send is already something, but if we have a Sangha that is free and solid then the energy we can send together will certainly be greater.  Our own undivided attention is a key to open the door of the ultimate reality and the undivided attention of our friends in the pravtice is an even greater key.  When a Sangha of one hundred or one thousand people practices purifying the actions of body, speech, and mind, and unifying body and mind to send energy, the energy generated will be very powerful, and will be able to change the situation which we call karma, the causes and effects of our actions.
In Buddhism, we know that the one we are praying to lies inside as well as outside of us.

The mushrooming of new religions and the attention that Asian outlooks are receiving in the West are surface signs of change, but more important are the shifts that are occurring in the Western worldview itself.  Science is changing.  It is showing Newtonian matter to be but the frozen surface of a nature which, at its torrential source, is ghostlike, "empathic" in the degree of its responsiveness, and in important ways ineffable.  And along with these changes within science, our attitude toward science is changing; we are maturing in our capacity to see it in perspective.  Impressed by its technology and power-to-prove, we slipped for a century or so into looking to science for the last true word about everything.  Now we see that there are things- they tend to be the higher, more important things- about which it can tell us nothing.  This frees us to look seriously to other sources of knowledge that take those things into account.

perfect day for bananabread

two unusual looking girls could be spotted walking down shattuck toward the berkeley bowl on the evening of july 2nd.  one is on the phone with her mom, talking about food.  the other, after a sad collection of events, is mourning the loss of the strap of her beloved shoe.  two days prior, both had sat on a street corner nearby, attempting to earn enough loose change to see moonrise kingdom for the 3rd and 2nd time, respectively.  they ended up collecting a grand total of: $0.00.  but.... company was earned.  one man drifted off the map after 35 years, and is back 4 years later with surreal tales of passing through jail.  the other is a tool fan, who goes by the name of origami tony.  the two fit together better than you'd think.
now one ponders the face of her crush.  her crush whom she has not yet spoken to.  she shall never speak to him, despite the fact that she will probably see him four to six times before the summer is through.  alas, it is entirely understandable that she cannot picture his face, for he covers it with an incredibly childish looking animal mask.
but we digress.  this story is supposed to be about bananabread.  not a bananafish.  not a bananacrush.  not even bananafriends.  BREAD goddammit BREAD.
so we've got eight rotting bananas in our freezer.  oh man are they frozen.  the solution is to put them in the toaster oven, and three minutes later to remove them with their leaking banana juice and licking it off her hands.  frida, that is. that's who her is.
though the toaster oven was of much assistance, it was undeniable that the bananas were still quite frozen. laura tried to mash, frida to smash.  and eventually the bananas joined the mix of other ingredients that had, VERY carelessly, been measured out.  wheat flour could be spotted on the floor, the counter, the stovetop, and in the sink.  banana peels formed a miniature mountain from the depths of the sink ocean.  frida observed the dough as it reached a state of completion.
"it looks like chicken salad" she declared with habitual serenity.
we put the chicken salad in the oven and thought about all we'd accomplished.  laura, the eager apprentice and frida, the kitchen master, would find out in only 60 minutes time what the fruits of their labor would yield....
Then he went over and sat down on the unoccupied twin bead, looked at the girl, aimed the pistol, and fired a bullet thru his right temple.