TAZ - Temporary Autonomous Zafu

2011-11-09T12:58:00.000-08:00

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

Rumi

Shrooms

2011-06-16T01:00:00.000-07:00

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110615/ts_yblog_thelookout/far-out-magic-mushrooms-could-have-medical-benefits-researchers-say

The hallucinogen in magic mushrooms may no longer just be for hippies seeking a trippy high.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have been studying the effects of psilocybin, a chemical found in some psychedelic mushrooms, that's credited with inducing transcendental states. Now, they say, they've zeroed in on the perfect dosage level to produce transformative mystical and spiritual experiences that offer long-lasting life-changing benefits, while carrying little risk of negative reactions.

The breakthrough could speed the day when doctors use psilocybin--long viewed skeptically for its association with 1960s countercultural thrill-seekers--for a range of valuable clinical functions, like easing the anxiety of terminally ill patients, treating depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, and helping smokers quit. Already, studies in which depressed cancer patients were given the drug have reported positive results. "I'm not afraid to die anymore" one participant told The Lookout.

The Johns Hopkins study--whose results will be published this week in the journal Psychopharmacology--involved giving healthy volunteers varying doses of psilocybin in a controlled and supportive setting, over four separate sessions. Looking back more than a year later, 94 percent of participants rated it as one of the top five most spiritually significant experiences of their lifetimes.

More important, 89 percent reported lasting, positive changes in their behavior--better relationships with others, for instance, or increased care for their own mental and physical well-being. Those assessments were corroborated by family members and others.

"I think my heart is more open to all interactions with other people," one volunteer reported in a questionnaire given to participants 14-months after their session.

"I feel that I relate better in my marriage," wrote another. "There is more empathy -- a greater understanding of people, and understanding their difficulties, and less judgment."

Identifying the exact right dosage for hallucinogenic drugs is crucial, Roland Griffiths, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins who led the study, explained to The Lookout. That's because a "bad trip" can trigger hazardous, self-destructive behavior, but low doses don't produce the kind of transformative experiences that can offer long-term benefits. By trying a range of doses, Griffiths said, researchers were able to find the sweet spot, "where a high or intermediate dose can produce, fairly reliably, these mystical experiences, with very low probability of a significant fear reaction."

In the 1950s and '60s, scientists became interested in the potential effects of hallucinogens like psilocybin, mescaline, and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) on both healthy and terminally ill people. Mexican Indians had, since ancient times, used psychedelic mushrooms with similar chemical structures to achieve intense spiritual experiences. But by the mid '60s, counterculture gurus like Dr. Timothy Leary and Aldous Huxley were talking up mind-altering drugs as a way of expanding one's consciousness and rejecting mainstream society. Stories, perhaps apocryphal, circulated about people jumping out of windows while on LSD, and some heavy users were said to have suffered permanent psychological damage. By the early '70s, the US government had essentially banned all hallucinogenic drugs.

But recent years have seen the beginning of a revival of mainstream scientific interest in mind-altering drugs, and particularly in the possibility of using them in a clinical setting to alleviate depression and anxiety. A 2004 study by the government of Holland (pdf) found psilocybin to have no significant negative effects.

Here in the United States, too, the climate may be shifting. In a statement accompanying the announcement of the Johns Hopkins findings, Jerome Jaffe, a former White House drug czar now at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said the results raise the question of whether psilocybin could prove useful "in dealing with the psychological distress experienced by some terminal patients?"

The hope is that the long-lasting spiritual and transcendental experiences associated with psilocybin could--if conducted in a controlled and supportive setting, and with appropriate dosage levels--help ease patients' fear and anxiety, allowing them to approach death with a greater sense of calm. (You can see one terminally ill cancer patient speak movingly about the positive effects of psilocybin http://blip.tv/heffter-research-institute/pam-sakuda-psilocybin-session-interview-516292.)

Griffiths thinks the drug may have the potential to alleviate the suffering of terminal patients. He's currently leading a separate Johns Hopkins psilocybin study http://www.bpru.org/cancer-studies/, using volunteers who are depressed after being diagnosed with cancer. "So far we've had--anecdotally only--very positive results," comparable to the study with healthy volunteers, he said. A study from the University of California, Los Angeles last year reported similar positive results http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/09/06/magic.mushrooms.ease.anxiety/index.html.

But Griffiths said his study, under way for three years, has only recruited 20 patients, in part because oncologists are more interested in curing cancer than helping patients cope with its effects, so they don't refer provide many referrals. "Most oncologists just don't get it," he said. "It's not the focus of their research, and they're busy people."

But the experience of one volunteer in Griffiths's study offers a glimpse of the potential benefits. Lauri Reamer, 47, told The Lookout that she participated in two Johns Hopkins psilocybin sessions last September, not long after ending intensive chemotherapy and radiation to treat a rare form of leukemia that, several times in the preceding few years, had almost taken her life.

Reamer, an anesthesiologist from Ruxton, Md., with three young daughters, said that although her disease was in remission by that time, she was still suffering psychologically from the trauma of the illness and the treatment. She had walled herself off emotionally, she said, and was unable to show empathy for others or even for herself.

The psilocybin had an immediate impact. "At the end of the session, I was just in this joyous, happy, relaxed state," she said. "The drug was gone--what was left was just this peaceful calm."

That calm had lasting benefits. Reamer said the experience--what she called "an epiphany"--gave her the impetus to get out of a failing marriage. Since doing so, she said, both she and her daughters have been much happier.

"I don't think it was the drug that did it," she said. "It was the drug that helped me find the clarity."

That's not the only improvement. "My sleeping has gotten better. My relationships have gotten better with people," she said. "The fog has lifted."

"The best thing it did for me was heal me psychologically and emotionally and allow me to be back in my kids' lives, be back to being a mother," Reamer concluded.Â As she spoke, she was taking her daughters--two 15-year old twins, and a 6-year-old--on a trip to Hershey Park.

And although doctors tell her that, thanks to the effect of the illness and the treatment, she likely has only 10 or 15 years to live, she's able to approach that challenge with equanimity.

"My fear of death kind of disappeared," she said. "I'm not afraid to die anymore."

Griffiths, of Johns Hopkins, said Reamer's experience isn't an outlier among the volunteers, both sick and healthy, who have tried psilocybin. "People feel uplifted, and very often have a sense that everything is O.K. at one level," he said. "That there's sense to be made out of the chaos."

"When you see people undergoing that kind of transformation," he added, "it's really quite moving."

Opening the Vox

2011-05-24T11:10:00.000-07:00

pandora’s vox: on community in cyberspace

by humdog (1994)

when i went into cyberspace i went into it thinking that it was a place like any other place and that it would be a human interaction like any other human interaction. i was wrong when i thought that. it was a terrible mistake.

the very first understanding that i had that it was not a place like any place and that the interaction would be different was when people began to talk to me as though i were a man. when they wrote about me in the third person, they would say “he.” it interested me to have people think i was “he” instead of “she” and so at first i did not say anything. i grinned and let them think i was “he.” this went on for a little while and it was fun but after a while i was uncomfortable. finally i said unto them that i, humdog, was a woman and not a man. this surprised them. at that moment i realized that the dissolution of gender-category was something that was happening everywhere, and perhaps it was only just very obvious on the net. this is the extent of my homage to Gender On The Net.

i suspect that cyberspace exists because it is the purest manifestation of the mass (masse) as Jean Beaudrilliard described it. it is a black hole; it absorbs energy and personality and then re-presents it as spectacle. people tend to express their vision of the mass as a kind of imaginary parade of blue-collar workers, their muscle-bound arms raised in defiant salute. sometimes in this vision they are holding wrenches in their hands. anyway, this image has its origins in Marx and it is as Romantic as a dozen long-stemmed red roses. the mass is more like one of those faceless dolls you find in nostalgia-craft shops: limp, cute, and silent. when i say “cute” i am including its macabre and sinister aspects within my definition.

it is fashionable to suggest that cyberspace is some kind of _island of the blessed_ where people are free to indulge and express their Individuality. some people write about cyberspace as though it were a 60′s utopia. in reality, this is not true. major online services, like compuserv and america online, regular guide and censor discourse. even some allegedly free-wheeling (albeit politically correct) boards like the WELL censor discourse. the difference is only a matter of the method and degree. what interests me about this, however, is that to the mass, the debate about freedom of expression exists only in terms of whether or not you can say fuck or look at sexually explicit pictures. i have a quaint view that makes me think that discussing the ability to write “fuck” or worrying about the ability to look at pictures of sexual acts constitutes The Least Of Our Problems surrounding freedom of expression.

western society has a problem with appearance and reality. it keeps wanting to split them off from each other, make one more real than the other, invest one with more meaning than it does the other. there are two people who have something to say about this: Nietzsche and Beaudrilliard. i invoke their names in case somebody thinks i made this up. Nietzsche thinks that the conflict over these ideas cannot be resolved. Beaudrilliard thinks that it was resolved and that this is how come some people think that communities can be virtual: we prefer simulation (simulacra) to reality. image and simulacra exert tremendous power upon culture. and it is this tension, that informs all the debates about Real and Not-Real that infect cyberspace with regards to identity, relationship, gender, discourse, and community. almost every discussion in cyberspace, about cyberspace, boils down to some sort of debate about Truth-In-Packaging.

cyberspace is a mostly a silent place. in its silence it shows itself to be an expression of the mass. one might question the idea of silence in a place where millions of user-ids parade around like angels of light, looking to see whom they might, so to speak, consume. the silence is nonetheless present and it is most present, paradoxically at the moment that the user-id speaks. when the user-id posts to a board, it does so while dwelling within an illusion that no one is present. language in cyberspace is a frozen landscape.

i have seen many people spill their guts on-line, and i did so myself until, at last, i began to see that i had commodified myself. commodification means that you turn something into a product which has a money-value. in the nineteenth century, commodities were made in factories, which karl marx called “the means of production.” capitalists were people who owned the means of production, and the commodities were made by workers who were mostly exploited. i created my interior thoughts as a means of production for the corporation that owned the board i was posting to, and that commodity was being sold to other commodity/consumer entities as entertainment. that means that i sold my soul like a tennis shoe and i derived no profit from the sale of my soul. people who post frequently on boards appear to know that they are factory equipment and tennis shoes, and sometimes trade sends and email about how their contributions are not appreciated by management.

as if this were not enough, all of my words were made immortal by means of tape backups. furthermore, i was paying two bucks an hour for the privilege of commodifying and exposing myself. worse still, i was subjecting myself to the possibility of scrutiny by such friendly folks as the FBI: they can, and have, downloaded pretty much whatever they damn well please. the rhetoric in cyberspace is liberation-speak. the reality is that cyberspace is an increasingly efficient tool of surveillance with which people have a voluntary relationship.

proponents of so-called cyber-communities rarely emphasize the economic, business-mind nature of the community: many cyber-communities are businesses that rely upon the commodification of human interaction. they market their businesses by appeal to hysterical identification and fetishism no more or less than the corporations that brought us the two hundred dollar athletic shoe. proponents of cyber- community do not often mention that these conferencing systems are rarely culturally or ethnically diverse, although they are quick to embrace the idea of cultural and ethnic diversity. they rarely address the whitebread demographics of cyberspace except when these demographics conflict with the upward-mobility concerns of white, middle class females under the rubric of orthodox academic Feminism.

the ideology of electronic community appears to contain three elements. first, the idea of the social; second, eco-greenness; and lastly, the assumption that technology equals progress in a kind of nineteenth century sense. all of these ideas break down under analysis into forms of banality.

as beaudrilliard has said, socialization is measured according to the amount of exposure to information, specifically, exposure to media. the social itself is a dinosaur: people are withdrawing into activities that are more about consumption than anything else. even the Evil Newt says that. ( i watched his class.) so-called electronic communities encourage participation in fragmented, mostly silent, microgroups who are primarily engaged in dialogues of self-congratulation. in other words, most people lurk; and the ones who post, are pleased with themselves.

eco-green is a social concept that is about making people feel good. what they feel good about is that they are getting a handle on what amounts to the trashing of planet earth by industrialists of the second industrial revolution. it is a good and desirable feeling, especially during a time where semioticists are trying to figure out how they are going to explain radiation- waste dumps to people thirty thousand years in the future. eco-green is also a way to re-package calvinistic values under a more palatable sign. americans are calvinists, i am sorry to say. they can’t help it: it arrived on the mayflower.

i also think that the idea of electronic community is a manifestation of the triumph of sign-value over worth-value. there is nothing that goes on in electronic community that is not infested with sign- value. if electronic community were anything other than exercise in sign-value, identity hacking, which is entirely about surface-sign, would be much more difficult. signs proclaiming electronic technology as green abound in cyberspace: the attitude of political correctness; the “green” computer, the “paperless” office and the illusion that identity in cyberspace can be manipulated to obscure gender, ethnicity, and other emblems of cultural diversity; the latter of course being both the most persistent and most ridiculous. both of these concepts, the social and the eco-green, are directly nourished by an idea of progress that would not have appeared unfamiliar to an industrialist in the nineteenth century.

i give you an example: the WELL, a conferencing system based in Sausalito, California, is often touted as an example of a “social cluster” in cyberspace. originally part of the Point Foundation, which is also associated with the Whole Earth Review and the Whole Earth Catalogues, the WELL occupies an interesting niche in the electronic-community marketplace. it markets itself as a conferencing system for the literate, bookish and creative individual. it markets itself as an agent for social change, and it is, in reality, calvinist and more than a little green. the WELL is also afflicted with an old fashioned hippie aura that lead to some remarkably touching ideas about society and culture. no one, by the way, should kid themselves that the WELL is any different than bigger services like America OnLine or Prodigy–all of these outfits are businesses and all of these services are owned by large corporations. the WELL is just, by reason of clunky interface, a little bit less obvious about it.

in july of 1993, in a case that received national media coverage, a man’s reputation was destroyed on the WELL, by WELLpeople, because he had dared to have a relationship with more than one woman at the same time, and because he did not conform to WELL social protocol. i will not say that he did not conform to ethical standards, because i believe that the ethic of truthfulness in cyberspace is sometimes such as to render the word ethics meaningless. in cyberspace, for example, identity can be an art-form. but the issues held within the topic, called News 1290,(now archived) were very complex and spoke to the heart of the problem of cyberspace: the desire to invest the simulacrum with the weight of reality.

the women involved in 1290 accepted the attention of the man simultaneously on several levels: most importantly, they believed in the reality of his sign and invested it with meaning. they made love to his sign and there is no doubt that the relationship affected them and that they felt pain and distress when it ended badly. at the same time it appears that the man involved did not invest their signs with the same meaning that they had his, and it is also clear that all parties did not discuss their perceptions of one another. consequently the miscommunication that occurred was ascribed to the man’s exploitation of the women he was involved with, and a conclusion was made that he had used them as sexual objects. the women, for their parts, were comfortable in the role of victim and so the games began. of the hundreds of voices heard in this topic, only a very few were astute enough to express the idea that the events had been in actuality caused more by the medium than by the persons who suffered the consequences of the events. persons of that view addressed the ideas of “missing cues” like body language, tone of voice, and physical appearance. none of this, they said, is present in cyberspace, and so people create unrealistic images of the Other. these opinions were in the minority, though. most people made suggestions that would have shocked the organizers of the Reign of Terror. even the words “thought criminal” were used and suggestions about lynching were made.

hysterical identification is a mental device that enables one person to take on the sufferings of a group of persons. it is something that until the 1880′s was considered a problem of females. in our society, many decisions about who a person is, are made through the device of hysterical identification. in many cases, this is brought about by the miracle of commercial advertising which invests products with magical qualities, making them into fetishes. buy the fetish, and the identification promised by the advertisement is yours. it is tidy, easy, and requires no investment other than money.

in october of 1994, couples topic 163 was opened. in this topic, user Z came on to discuss her marital problems, which involved a daughter who was emotionally disturbed. it began in a very ordinary way for this type of thing, with the woman asking for and receiving advice about what to do. in just a few days, though, the situation escalated, and the woman put another voice on the wire, who was alleged to be her daughter, X. the alleged daughter exposed her problems and expressed her feelings about them, and the problems appeared to be life-threatening. this seemed to set something off within the conference, and a real orgy began as voices began to appear to express their identification with the mysterious and troubled daughter X. the nature of the identifications and the tone of the posts became stranger and stranger and finally user Z set the frightening crown upon the whole situation by posting a twistedly lyrical monologue of maternal comfort and consolation directed at the virtual Inner Children who had appeared to take refuge within her soft, enveloping arms. the more that the Inner Children wept, the more that the Virtual Mommy lyricized and comforted. this spectacle, which horrified more than one trained mental health professional who read it on the WELL, went on and on for several days and was discussed privately in several places in disbelieving tones. when the topic imploded, the Virtual Mommy withdrew reluctantly insisting that only a barbarian would believe that she would commodify her own tragedy.

one of the interesting things about both of these incidents, to me, is that they were expunged from the record. News1290 exists in archive. that means that it is stored in an electronic cabinet, sort of like what the Vatican did with the transcripts of the trial of Galileo. it’s there, but you have to look for it, and mention of 1290 makes WELLpeople nervous. Couples 163 was killed. that means it was destroyed, and does not exist at all anymore, except on back- up tape or in the hard disks of those persons (like me) who downloaded it for their own reasons. what i am getting at here is that electronic community is a commercial enterprise that dovetails nicely with the increasing trend towards dehumanization in our society: it wants to commodify human interaction, enjoy the spectacle regardless of the human cost. if and when the spectacle proves incovenient or alarming, it engages in creative history like, like any good banana republic.

this, however, should not surprise anybody. aesthetically, electronic community of the kind likely to be extolled in the gentle, new-age press, contains both elements of the modernist resistance to depth and appeal to surface combined with the postmodern aesthetic of fragment. the electronic community leaves a permanent record which is open to scrutiny while maintaining an illusion of transience. in doing this, it somehow manages to satisfy the needs of the orwellian and the psycho-archeologist.

people can talk about cyberspace as a Utopian community only because it is literature, and therefore subject to editorial revision. these two events plus another where a woman’s death was choreographed as spectacle online, made me think about what electronic community was, and how it probably really did not exist, except like i said, as a kind of market for the consumption of sign-value.

increasingly, consumption is micro-managed, as the great marxists alvin and heidi toffler suggest when they talk about “de-massing.” so-called electronic community may be seen as a kind of micro-marketing of the social to a self-selected elite. this denies the possibility of human relationship, from which all authentic community proceeds. if one exists merely as sign-value, as a series of white letters, as a subset, then of course it is perfectly fine and we can talk about a community of signs, nicely boxed, categorized and inventoried, ready for consumption.

many times in cyberspace, i felt it necessary to say that i was human. once, i was told that i existed primarily as a voice in somebody’s head. lots of times, i need to see handwriting on paper or a photograph or a phone conversation to confirm the humanity of the voice, but that is the way that i am. i resist being boxed and inventoried and i guess i take william gibson seriously when he writes about machine intelligence and constructs. i do not like it. i suspect that my words have been extracted and that when this essay shows up, they will be extracted some more. when i left cyberspace, i left early one morning and forgot to take out the trash. two friends called me on the phone afterwards and said, hummie your directory is still there. and i said OH. and they knew and i knew, that it was possible that people had been entertaining themselves with the contents of my directories. the amusement never ends, as peter gabriel wrote. maybe sometime i will rant again if something interesting comes up. in the meantime, give my love to the FBI.

Flash mOHMb

2011-02-13T09:26:00.001-08:00

Meditation Flash Mob: Texas State Capital Building from Greenheart Creative on Vimeo.

Don't add to that.

2011-02-11T05:04:00.000-08:00

"don't be like so many thousands of

people who call themselves writers,

don't be dull and boring and

pretentious, don't be consumed with self-

love.

the libraries of the world have

yawned themselves to

sleep

over your kind.

don't add to that."

Charles Bukowski

Swallowed up

2011-02-06T11:07:00.000-08:00

When people think about loneliness, they often think about something trifling, about a feeling that passes in hours or days. My experience of loneliness wasn't like this. It didn't lift. It lasted for years.

In my early 30s, as my friends became parents and partners, and after I'd watched my father die of cancer, my life, which had previously been quite social, began to tilt. I started work at a small law firm where I was often on my own. I lived alone. I could spend evening after evening cooped up in my flat, and I was often faced with weekends that offered little or nothing in the way of company.

As my isolation persisted, my feelings of loneliness began to change. I think it's this long-term, intense loneliness that many people don't understand. They don't realise that loneliness can come alive, that it can start to snap and hound at a life.

By the end of my first year of loneliness, I had voices running through my head. It's said that everyone talks to themselves, but not like this – not with rapid-fire conversation giving way to arguments giving way to tears. To tone down the imagined conversations, I kept a journal, but my journal-keeping collapsed into sessions of self-scrutiny, as I tried to understand just what it was about me that was leaving me so lonely.

I felt a certain dumbing down in the midst of my loneliness. I couldn't read as quickly or as well as I used to. I wasn't as imaginative. I said less. Without people around me, I began to feel as though I were taking up less space. I sometimes felt so ungrounded, so immaterial and unreal, that I thought I might just drift away.

There was a relentlessness to my loneliness. It haunted me. I felt lonely on the tube, where I'd overhear women gossiping about their boyfriends; I felt lonely at work, when my boss's young daughter came rushing in; I felt lonely as I left for home, knowing that there would be no one there to greet me. I'd dream of isolation – I'd be calling around, trying to find the address of a party no one could tell me how to get to – or wake from dreams of togetherness only to find myself alone.

I changed. This was the hardest thing to accept – that I couldn't be lonely and remain myself. I became less spontaneous, less confident and secure. Interacting with others, I had to hide my feeling of marginalisation, and since marginalisation had come to define my life, I wound up hiding most of myself. I wanted to turn back into the former me, the connected me, but I couldn't find my way back. Loneliness seemed to have dropped me somewhere deserted, without compass or map or much hope of return.

That sense of being lost, of having to do daily battle with loneliness, lasted for four exhausting years. Those years saw my sleep go haywire, my body grow fat, and my sense of self shatter.

And what bothers me most is that no one asked me what was happening. Friends and relatives probably had some sense that I was lonely, but they couldn't peer inside the state and appreciate what was really taking place. My life was unravelling amid constant, unspoken suggestions that loneliness didn't matter, that it wasn't really "real".

It was real. My loneliness swallowed me up. I fear it descending again. And what I fear is something substantive, like fearing a car crash. I know what happens when you're lonely. I know about the voices, the sense of vanishing, the horrible envy of others. No one should have to endure years like that. No one, especially, should have to endure years like that when everyone around them thinks that loneliness is something trivial, something that hardly affects you at all.

Emily White is the author of Lonely: A Memoir, published by HarperCollins.

Is that all there is?

2011-02-06T08:28:00.000-08:00

DISILLUSIONMENT

By Thomas Mann
Translated from the German by H.T. Lowe-Porter

I confess that I was completely bewildered by the conversation which I had with
this extraordinary man. I am afraid that I am even yet hardly in a state to
report it in such a way that it will affect others as it did me. Very likely
the effect was largely due to the candour and friendliness with which an entire
stranger laid himself open to me.

It was some two months ago, on an autumnal afternoon, that I first noticed my
stranger on the Piazza di San Marco. Only a few people were abroad; but on the
wide square the standards flapped in the light sea-breeze in front of that
sumptuous marvel of colour and line which stood out with luminous enchantment
against a tender pale-blue sky. Directly before the centre portal a young girl
stood strewing corn for a host of pigeons at her feet, while more and more
swooped down in clouds from all sides. An incomparably blithe and festive
sight.

I met him on the square and I have him in perfect clarity before my eye as I
write. He was rather under middle height and a little stooped, walking briskly
and holding his cane in his hands behind his back. He wore a stiff black hat, a
light summer overcoat, and dark striped trousers. For some reason I mistook him
for an Englishman. He might have been thirty years old, he might have been
fifty. His face was smooth-shaven, with a thickish nose and tired grey eyes;
round his mouth played constantly an inexplicable and somewhat simple smile.
But from time to time he would look searchingly about him, then stare upon the
ground, mutter a few words to himself, give his head a shake and fall to smiling
again. In this fashion he marched perseveringly up and down the square.

After that first time I noticed him daily; for he seemed to have no other
business than to pace up and down, thirty, forty, or fifty times, in good
weather and bad, always alone and always with that extraordinary bearing of his.

On the evening which I mean to describe there had been a concert by a military
band. I was sitting at one of the little tables which spread out into the
piazza from Florian's cafe; and when after the concert the concourse of people
had begun to disperse, my unknown, with his accustomed absent smile, sat down in
a seat left vacant near me.

The evening drew on, the scene grew quieter and quieter, soon all the tables
were empty. Hardly any strollers were left, the majestic square was wrapped in
peace, the sky above it thick with stars; a great half-moon hung above the
splendid spectacular facade of San Marco.

I had been reading my paper, with my back to my neighbour, and was about to
surrender the field to him when I was obliged instead to turn in his direction.
For whereas I had not heard a single sound, he now suddenly began to speak.

"You are in Venice for the first time, sir?" he asked, in bad French. When I
essayed to answer in English he went on in good German, speaking in a low, husky
voice and coughing often to clear it.

"You are seeing all this for the first time? Does it come up to your
expectations? Surpasses them, eh? You did not picture it as finer than the
reality? You mean it? You would not say so in order to seem happy and
enviable? Ah!" He leaned back and looked at me, blinking rapidly with a quite
inexplicable expression.

The ensuing pause lasted for some time. I did not know how to go on with this
singular conversation and once more was about to depart when he hastily leaned
towards me.

"Do you know, my dear sir, what disillusionment is?" he asked in low, urgent
tones, both hands leaning on his stick. "Not a miscarriage in small,
unimportant matters, but the great and general disappointment which everything,
all of life, has in store? No, of course, you do not know. But from my youth
up I have carried it about with me; it has made me lonely, unhappy, and a bit
queer, I do not deny that.

"You could not, of course, understand what I mean, all at once. But you might;
I beg of you to listen to me for a few minutes. For if it can be told at all it
can be told without many words.

"I may begin by saying that I grew up in a clergyman's family, in quite a small
town. There reigned in our home a punctilious cleanliness and the pathetic
optimism of the scholarly atmosphere. We breathed a strange atmosphere, compact
of pulpit rhetoric, of large words for good and evil, beautiful and base, which
I bitterly hate, since perhaps they are to blame for all my sufferings.

"For me life consisted utterly of those large words; for I knew no more of it
than the infinite, insubstantial emotions which they called up in me. From man
I expected divine virtue or hair-raising wickedness; from life either ravishing
loveliness or else consummate horror; and I was full of avidity for all that and
of a profound, tormented yearning for a larger reality, for experience of no
matter what kind, let it be glorious and intoxicating bliss or unspeakable,
undreamed-of anguish.

"I remember, sir, with painful clearness the first disappointment of my life;
and I would beg you to observe that it had not at all to do with the miscarriage
of some cherished hope, but with an unfortunate occurrence. There was a fire at
night in my parents' house, when I was hardly more than a child. It had spread
insidiously until the whole small storey was in flames up to my chamber door,
and the stairs would soon have been on fire as well. I discovered it first, and
I remember that I went rushing through the house shouting over and over: 'Fire,
fire!' I know exactly what I said and what feeling underlay the words, though at
the time it could scarcely have come to the surface of my consciousness. 'So
this,' I thought, 'is a fire. This is what it is like to have the house on
fire. Is this all there is to it?'

"Goodness knows it was serious enough. The whole house burned down, the family
was only saved with difficulty, and I got some burns. And it would be wrong to
say that my fancy could have painted anything much worse than the actual burning
of my parents' house. Yet some vague, formless idea of an event even more
frightful must have existed somewhere within me, by comparison with which the
reality seemed flat. This fire was the first great event in my life. It left
me defrauded of my hope of fearfulness.

"Do not fear lest I go on to recount my disappointments in detail. Enough to
tell you that I zealously fed my magnificent expectations of life with the
matter of a thousand books and the works of all the poets. Ah, how I have
learned to hate them, those poets who chalked up their large words on all the
walls of life -- because they had no power to write them on the very sky with
pencils dipped in Vesuvius! I came to think of every large word as a lie or a
mockery.

"Ecstatic poets have said that speech is poor: 'Ah, how poor are words,' so they
sing. But no, sir. Speech, it seems to me, is rich, is extravagantly rich
compared with the poverty and limitations of life. Pain has its limits:
physical pain in unconsciousness and mental in torpor; it is not different with
joy. Our human need for communication has found itself a way to create sounds
which lie beyond those limits.

"Is the fault mine? Is it down my spine alone that certain words can run so as
to awaken in me intuitions of sensations which do not exist?

"I went out into that supposedly so wonderful life, craving just one, one single
experience which should correspond to my great expectations. God help me, I
have never had it. I have roved the globe over, seen all the best-praised
sights, all the works of art upon which have been lavished the most extravagant
words. I have stood in front of these and said to myself: 'It is beautiful.
And yet -- is that all? Is it no more beautiful than that?'

"I have no sense of actualities. Perhaps that is the trouble. Once, somewhere
in the world, I stood by a deep, narrow gorge in the mountains. Bare rock went
up perpendicular on either side, and far below the water roared past. I looked
down and thought to myself: 'What if I were to fall?' But I knew myself well
enough to answer: 'If that were to happen you would say to yourself as you fell:
"Now you are falling, you are actually falling. Well, and what of it?"'

"You may believe that I do not speak with experience of life. Years ago I fell
in love with a girl, a charming, gentle creature, whom it would have been my joy
to protect and cherish. But she loved me not, which was not surprising, and she
married another. What other experience can be so painful as this? What
tortures are greater than the dry agonies of baffled lust? Many a night I lay
wide-eyed and wakeful; yet my greatest torture resided in the thought: 'So this
is the greatest pain we can suffer. Well, and what then -- is this all?'

"Shall I go on to tell you of my happiness? For I have had my happiness as well
and it too has been a disappointment. No, I need not go on; for no heaping up
of bald examples can make clearer to you that it is life in general, life in its
dull, uninteresting, average course which has disappointed me -- disappointed,
disappointed!

"What is man? asks young Werther -- man, the glorious half-god? Do not his
powers fail him just where he needs them most? Whether he soars upwards in joy
or sinks down in anguish, is he not always brought back to bald, cold
consciousness precisely at the point where he seeks to lose himself in the
fullness of the infinite?

"Often I have thought of the day when I gazed for the first time at the sea.
The sea is vast, the sea is wide, my eyes roved far and wide and longed to be
free. But there was the horizon. Why a horizon, when I wanted the infinite
from life?

"It may be narrower, my horizon, than that of other men. I have said that I
lack a sense of actualities -- perhaps it is that I have too much. Perhaps I am
too soon full, perhaps I am too soon done with things. Am I acquainted in too
adulterated a form with both joy and pain?

"I do not believe it; and least of all do I believe in those whose views of life
are based on the great words of the poets -- it is all lies and poltroonery.
And you may have observed, my dear sir, that there are human beings so vain and
so greedy of the admiration and envy of others that they pretend to have
experienced the heights of happiness but never the depths of pain?

"It is dark and you have almost ceased to listen to me; so I can the more easily
confess that I too have tried to be like these men and make myself appear happy
in my own and others' eyes. But it is some years since that the bubble of this
vanity was pricked. Now I am alone, unhappy, and a little queer, I do not deny
it.

"It is my favourite occupation to gaze at the starry heavens at night -- that
being the best way to turn my eyes away from earth and from life. And perhaps
it may be pardoned in me that I still cling to my distant hopes? That I dream
of a freer life, where the actuality of my fondest anticipations if revealed to
be without any torturing residue of disillusionment? Of a life where there are
no more horizons?

"So I dream and wait for death. Ah, how well I know it already, death, that
last disappointment! At my last moment I shall be saying to myself: 'So this is
the great experience -- well, and what of it? What is it after all?'

"But it has grown cold here on the piazza, sir -- that I can still feel -- ha
ha! I have the honour to bid you a very good night."

The Sun, The Moon

2011-02-06T03:26:00.000-08:00

The sun, whose rays
Are all ablaze
With ever-living glory,
Does not deny
His majesty--
He scorns to tell a story!
He won't exclaim,
"I blush for shame,
So kindly be indulgent."
But, fierce and bold,
In fiery gold,
He glories all effulgent!

I mean to rule the earth,
As he the sky--
We really know our worth,
The sun and I!

Observe his flame,
That placid dame,
The moon's Celestial Highness;
There's not a trace
Upon her face
Of diffidence or shyness:
She borrows light
That, through the night,
Mankind may all acclaim her!
And, truth to tell,
She lights up well,
So I, for one, don't blame her!

Ah, pray make no mistake,
We are not shy;
We're very wide awake,
The moon and I!

When kids before cash cows

2011-02-06T01:53:00.000-08:00

Head teachers claim stimulants are being over-prescribed to young children, who they suspect are not sufferers of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). They say unscrupulous parents of troubled youngsters are pushing for an ADHD diagnosis to claim disability benefits.

"I think parents are very well aware of how the system works, in terms of obtaining the drugs for their children, and the monetary gains that they get through a diagnosis."

"They know what they're doing."

This head teacher of a primary school chooses her words carefully.

"Susan" has asked to remain anonymous, because she knows what she says is controversial and does not want to stigmatise the parents of every child with a diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

The suspected false diagnoses that concern Susan mean children can end up on powerful drugs, such as Ritalin, even if they do not have ADHD.

"It is not right that a benefit set up to improve lives could be having the opposite impact”

"Sarah", another head teacher, also believes that some parents lie to medical professionals in order to get a diagnosis, and the chance to apply for extra benefits.

She told the 5 live Investigates programme: "Some parents will exaggerate what exactly is happening at home, particularly in terms of aggressive behaviour, violent behaviour, breaking furniture and so on, in order to get a care allowance."

Primary school head, Susan, believes this is now a well-established route to claiming additional benefits.

"Every child I have on medication, we are asked to fill part of the forms that they [parents] submit as benefit claimants, to verify they have ADHD, so it goes hand-in-hand."

False claims

Parents of children with ADHD are potentially entitled to claim Disability Living Allowance as, in severe cases, family life can be disrupted and parents may need to spend more time at home or seek additional support.
Children in school playground NICE guidelines recommend children are observed in two settings when assessed for possible ADHD

Abuse of the Disability Living Allowance by parents is one reason the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is discussing reform. Responding to the claims made the teachers, a DWP spokesperson told the BBC:

"We have done extensive work to improve the claims process for children to ensure that families get the support they need.

"It is not right that a benefit set up to improve lives could be having the opposite impact."

The teachers speaking to BBC 5 live agree ADHD drugs work well for some children. However, they believe that a failure by doctors to follow guidelines for diagnosis, issued by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), allows unscrupulous parents to play the system.

The NICE guidelines recommend that when children are assessed for ADHD, they should be observed in at least two settings - usually the child's home and school.

In the experience of head teacher Sarah, this process is not thorough enough as doctors often only request basic information from schools.

"You'd certainly want to interview an educational professional who worked closely with the child," suggests Sarah.

"Simply completing a form where a lot of it will be tick boxes, and then a short report on what their general behaviour is like, is not enough, I don't think, to make a diagnosis."

Susan shares this concern, too. She says: "Parents will go to their GP, who then refers them to a paediatrician. They will tell the paediatrician about what their child is up to, and if they've got into trouble at school, then a drug is prescribed - with no consultation with schools.

"We just feel the paediatrician is not getting a full picture."

Positive effect

ADHD was first identified in the 1950s and there is now a widespread scientific consensus that many children, especially with more severe symptoms, can benefit from stimulant drugs.

Such drugs can have a positive effect that helps children who suffer from severe ADHD to regulate their behaviour.

But because they are a powerful medication, which can suppress appetite or affect sleep, they are not recommended as an initial treatment for children with more moderate symptoms.

Mainstream medical opinion supports the use of stimulant drugs to treat children with ADHD

There is, however, growing concern that the current system is being abused, leading to significant over-prescription of stimulants to young children and teenagers.

Figures released by the Department of Health show that in 2009 the number of prescriptions issued to 16-18 years olds to treat ADHD had risen by 51% in just two years.

Head teacher Susan recalls being accidentally sent an e-mail by a paediatrician who had prescribed drugs to one of the pupils at her school.

The e-mail featured a list of bogus claims the parents had raised about their child's behaviour in school.

"The doctor had not bothered to ring our school to find out if any of this was true. So we wrote to explain that the child had not actually been in school for 12 weeks."

Susan believes the parents had only one purpose in lying to the doctor.

"To get more medication. They wanted more medication, and so had exaggerated the child's behaviour - and the doctor fell for this hook, line and sinker."

A spokesperson for the Royal College of Psychiatrists told the BBC:

"Children with ADHD, who are not severely impaired, should receive psychological and behavioural treatments and their parents or carers should be referred to parent-training and education programmes.

"If a child has very severe problems, they should be offered methylphenidate (Ritalin) as well, but no child should be offered drugs alone."

However, there have been complaints that the provision of support for parents of children with behavioural problems is too patchy, and that intermediate treatments, such as talking therapy, are sometimes discarded too quickly on the grounds of both cost and convenience.

This is something the government has pledged to change, as it recently announced a new mental health strategy for England, promising an extra £400m for therapies, such as counselling, to increase access to them by 60% by 2015.

Buddhist Anarchism

2011-02-02T14:57:00.000-08:00

Buddhist Anarchism

Buddhism holds that the universe and all creatures in it are intrinsically in a state of complete wisdom, love and compassion; acting in natural response and mutual interdependence. The personal realization of this from-the-beginning state cannot be had for and by one-“self” — because it is not fully realized unless one has given the self up; and away.

In the Buddhist view, that which obstructs the effortless manifestation of this is Ignorance, which projects into fear and needless craving. Historically, Buddhist philosophers have failed to analyze out the degree to which ignorance and suffering are caused or encouraged by social factors, considering fear-and-desire to be given facts of the human condition. Consequently the major concern of Buddhist philosophy is epistemology and “psychology” with no attention paid to historical or sociological problems. Although Mahayana Buddhism has a grand vision of universal salvation, the actual achievement of Buddhism has been the development of practical systems of meditation toward the end of liberating a few dedicated individuals from psychological hangups and cultural conditionings. Institutional Buddhism has been conspicuously ready to accept or ignore the inequalities and tyrannies of whatever political system it found itself under. This can be death to Buddhism, because it is death to any meaningful function of compassion. Wisdom without compassion feels no pain.

No one today can afford to be innocent, or indulge himself in ignorance of the nature of contemporary governments, politics and social orders. The national polities of the modern world maintain their existence by deliberately fostered craving and fear: monstrous protection rackets. The “free world” has become economically dependent on a fantastic system of stimulation of greed which cannot be fulfilled, sexual desire which cannot be satiated and hatred which has no outlet except against oneself, the persons one is supposed to love, or the revolutionary aspirations of pitiful, poverty-stricken marginal societies like Cuba or Vietnam. The conditions of the Cold War have turned all modern societies — Communist included — into vicious distorters of man’s true potential. They create populations of “preta” — hungry ghosts, with giant appetites and throats no bigger than needles. The soil, the forests and all animal life are being consumed by these cancerous collectivities; the air and water of the planet is being fouled by them.

There is nothing in human nature or the requirements of human social organization which intrinsically requires that a culture be contradictory, repressive and productive of violent and frustrated personalities. Recent findings in anthropology and psychology make this more and more evident. One can prove it for himself by taking a good look at his own nature through meditation. Once a person has this much faith and insight, he must be led to a deep concern with the need for radical social change through a variety of hopefully non-violent means.

The joyous and voluntary poverty of Buddhism becomes a positive force. The traditional harmlessness and refusal to take life in any form has nation-shaking implications. The practice of meditation, for which one needs only “the ground beneath one’s feet,” wipes out mountains of junk being pumped into the mind by the mass media and supermarket universities. The belief in a serene and generous fulfillment of natural loving desires destroys ideologies which blind, maim and repress — and points the way to a kind of community which would amaze “moralists” and transform armies of men who are fighters because they cannot be lovers.

Avatamsaka (Kegon) Buddhist philosophy sees the world as a vast interrelated network in which all objects and creatures are necessary and illuminated. From one standpoint, governments, wars, or all that we consider “evil” are uncompromisingly contained in this totalistic realm. The hawk, the swoop and the hare are one. From the “human” standpoint we cannot live in those terms unless all beings see with the same enlightened eye. The Bodhisattva lives by the sufferer’s standard, and he must be effective in aiding those who suffer.

The mercy of the West has been social revolution; the mercy of the East has been individual insight into the basic self/void. We need both. They are both contained in the traditional three aspects of the Dharma path: wisdom (prajna), meditation (dhyana), and morality (sila). Wisdom is intuitive knowledge of the mind of love and clarity that lies beneath one’s ego-driven anxieties and aggressions. Meditation is going into the mind to see this for yourself — over and over again, until it becomes the mind you live in. Morality is bringing it back out in the way you live, through personal example and responsible action, ultimately toward the true community (sangha) of “all beings.”

This last aspect means, for me, supporting any cultural and economic revolution that moves clearly toward a free, international, classless world. It means using such means as civil disobedience, outspoken criticism, protest, pacifism, voluntary poverty and even gentle violence if it comes to a matter of restraining some impetuous redneck. It means affirming the widest possible spectrum of non-harmful individual behavior — defending the right of individuals to smoke hemp, eat peyote, be polygynous, polyandrous or homosexual. Worlds of behavior and custom long banned by the Judaeo-Capitalist-Christian-Marxist West. It means respecting intelligence and learning, but not as greed or means to personal power. Working on one’s own responsibility, but willing to work with a group. “Forming the new society within the shell of the old” — the IWW slogan of fifty years ago.

The traditional cultures are in any case doomed, and rather than cling to their good aspects hopelessly it should be remembered that whatever is or ever was in any other culture can be reconstructed from the unconscious, through meditation. In fact, it is my own view that the coming revolution will close the circle and link us in many ways with the most creative aspects of our archaic past. If we are lucky we may eventually arrive at a totally integrated world culture with matrilineal descent, free-form marriage, natural-credit communist economy, less industry, far less population and lots more national parks.

GARY SNYDER
1961

Does this mean that i'm not alone?

2010-12-25T11:57:00.000-08:00

One act of kindness that befell British writer Bernard Hare in 1982 changed him profoundly. Then a student living just north of London, he tells the story to inspire troubled young people to help deal with their disrupted lives.

The police called at my student hovel early evening, but I didn't answer as I thought they'd come to evict me. I hadn't paid my rent in months.

But then I got to thinking: my mum hadn't been too good and what if it was something about her?

We had no phone in the hovel and mobiles hadn't been invented yet, so I had to nip down the phone box.

I rang home to Leeds to find my mother was in hospital and not expected to survive the night. "Get home, son," my dad said.

I got to the railway station to find I'd missed the last train. A train was going as far as Peterborough, but I would miss the connecting Leeds train by twenty minutes.

I bought a ticket home and got on anyway. I was a struggling student and didn't have the money for a taxi the whole way, but I had a screwdriver in my pocket and my bunch of skeleton keys.

I was so desperate to get home that I planned to nick a car in Peterborough, hitch hike, steal some money, something, anything. I just knew from my dad's tone of voice that my mother was going to die that night and I intended to get home if it killed me.

"Tickets, please," I heard, as I stared blankly out of the window at the passing darkness. I fumbled for my ticket and gave it to the guard when he approached. He stamped it, but then just stood there looking at me. I'd been crying, had red eyes and must have looked a fright.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Course I'm okay," I said. "Why wouldn't I be? And what's it got to do with you in any case?"

"You look awful," he said. "Is there anything I can do?"

"You could get lost and mind your own business," I said. "That'd be a big help." I wasn't in the mood for talking.

He was only a little bloke and he must have read the danger signals in my body language and tone of voice, but he sat down opposite me anyway and continued to engage me.

"If there's a problem, I'm here to help. That's what I'm paid for."

I was a big bloke in my prime, so I thought for a second about physically sending him on his way, but somehow it didn't seem appropriate. He wasn't really doing much wrong. I was going through all the stages of grief at once: denial, anger, guilt, withdrawal, everything but acceptance. I was a bubbling cauldron of emotion and he had placed himself in my line of fire.

The only other thing I could think of to get rid of him was to tell him my story.

"Look, my mum's in hospital, dying, she won't survive the night, I'm going to miss the connection to Leeds at Peterborough, I'm not sure how I'm going to get home.

"It's tonight or never, I won't get another chance, I'm a bit upset, I don't really feel like talking, I'd be grateful if you'd leave me alone. Okay?"

"Okay," he said, finally getting up. "Sorry to hear that, son. I'll leave you alone then. Hope you make it home in time." Then he wandered off down the carriage back the way he came.

I continued to look out of the window at the dark. Ten minutes later, he was back at the side of my table. Oh no, I thought, here we go again. This time I really am going to rag him down the train.

He touched my arm. "Listen, when we get to Peterborough, shoot straight over to Platform One as quick as you like. The Leeds train'll be there."

I looked at him dumbfounded. It wasn't really registering. "Come again," I said, stupidly. "What do you mean? Is it late, or something?"

"No, it isn't late," he said, defensively, as if he really cared whether trains were late or not. "No, I've just radioed Peterborough. They're going to hold the train up for you. As soon as you get on, it goes.

"Everyone will be complaining about how late it is, but let's not worry about that on this occasion. You'll get home and that's the main thing. Good luck and God bless."

Then he was off down the train again. "Tickets, please. Any more tickets now?"

I suddenly realised what a top-class, fully-fledged doilem I was and chased him down the train. I wanted to give him all the money from my wallet, my driver's licence, my keys, but I knew he would be offended.

I caught him up and grabbed his arm. "Oh, er, I just wanted to…" I was suddenly speechless. "I, erm…"

"It's okay," he said. "Not a problem." He had a warm smile on his face and true compassion in his eyes. He was a good man for its own sake and required nothing in return.

"I wish I had some way to thank you," I said. "I appreciate what you've done."

"Not a problem," he said again. "If you feel the need to thank me, the next time you see someone in trouble, you help them out. That will pay me back amply.

"Tell them to pay you back the same way and soon the world will be a better place."

I was at my mother's side when she died in the early hours of the morning. Even now, I can't think of her without remembering the Good Conductor on that late-night train to Peterborough and, to this day, I won't hear a bad word said about British Rail.

My meeting with the Good Conductor changed me from a selfish, potentially violent hedonist into a decent human being, but it took time.

"I've paid him back a thousand times since then," I tell the young people I work with, "and I'll keep on doing so till the day I die. You don't owe me nothing. Nothing at all."

"And if you think you do, I'd give you the same advice the Good Conductor gave me. Pass it down the line."

Dis-Illusioned

2010-11-21T13:39:00.000-08:00

...“what happens but once, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all.”

Following this logic, life is insignificant, and decisions do not matter, and are thus rendered light, because they do not cause personal suffering. Yet the insignificance of decisions — our being — causes us great suffering, perceived as the unbearable lightness of being consequent to one’s awareness of life occurring once and never again; thus no one person’s actions are universally significant.

This insignificance is existentially unbearable when it is considered that people want their lives to have transcendent meaning.

I stood in the awe

2010-11-12T14:08:00.000-08:00

I have been cruel and kind without knowing
I fell in the silence overwhelmed by these days
For I have been shown dear rulers, ruling all things
Thinking the world was mine to lay hold on
I breathe in the promise of maiden and man
But each have their on illusions to hold onto

I only want to be left to my own ways
The rulers of one leaving all things undone
I stood in the awe of the whole creations
Gathered among them was the morning
Giving all its rays

Thinking the world was mine to be lost in
I ran with freedom and sank in between
For I have the path of wonder
There before me

I only want to be left to my own ways
The rulers of one leaving all things undone
I stood in the awe of the whole creation
Gathered among them was the morning
Giving all its rays

My Dharma

2010-10-30T05:48:00.000-07:00

My dharma brings all the monks to the yard,
And they're like
It's better than yours,
Damn right it's better than yours,
I can teach you,
But I have to charge

I know you want it,
The dharma that makes me,
What the monks go crazy for.
They lose their minds,
The way I meditate,
I think its time

My dharma brings all the monks to the yard,
And they're like
It's better than yours,
Damn right it's better than yours,
I can teach you,
But I have to charge

I can see you're on it,
You want me to teach thee
Techniques that freaks these monks,
It can't be bought,
Just know, thieves get caught,
Watch if your smart,

My dharma brings all the monks to the yard,
And they're like
It's better than yours,
Damn right it's better than yours,
I can teach you,
But I have to charge

Wishing Well?

2010-10-28T13:05:00.000-07:00

"I have everything I wanted -- but I wanted all the wrong things."

Heart Chakra: FUBAR

2010-10-14T11:16:00.000-07:00

If your heart chakra is off balance or shut down, you might have a tendency to run away from intimacy. You might even intentionally push otherwise loving and lovable people away from you. Without this sense of connection, you become critical, suspicious and defensive. Paranoia becomes a real possibility. If your heart center shuts down completely, you may be inclined toward secrecy, betrayal and addictions.

By closing your heart, you continue to push people away, who in response reject you again, seemingly validating your initial etermination to seal yourself off. Again and again you pull back. Again and again you're pushed away. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Your heart becomes more closed and you become more isolated.

The Zen of Coward

2010-10-01T13:35:00.000-07:00

“My importance to the world is relatively small. On the other hand, my importance to myself is tremendous. I am all I have to work with, to play with, to suffer and to enjoy. It is not the eyes of others that I am wary of, but of my own. I do not intend to let myself down more than I can possibly help, and I find that the fewer illusions I have about myself or the world around me, the better company I am for myself.”

In defence of Melacholy

2010-09-29T00:42:00.000-07:00

It might be a start to revive or recapture some of the wider, non-medical vocabulary for the gamut of human experience.

Depression may also be melancholy: it may be discouragement, disappointment, abandonment, sadness, sorrow, mourning, rejection, regret, anxiety, grief, obsession, introspection, loss, separation, loneliness, isolation, alienation, guilt, loss of hope, temperamental woe and simple, pure, unhappiness.

It can be forms of low mood now out of date. The Edwardians were very keen on a condition known as "neurasthenia"; Virginia Woolf was diagnosed with it.

It was also known as "nervous debility", or, in its milder form, being hyper-sensitive and thin-skinned.
"Anomie" was another condition once favoured in the 19th Century by the sociologist Emile Durkheim, and from a sociologist, a sociological condition. Anomie was defined as an isolated mood caused by the breakdown of social norms, sense of purpose and rules of conduct.
There was also a spiritual form of depression called "accidie" much brooded on by some of the saints - this was "dryness of the soul". The writer Malcolm Muggeridge also complained of suffering from it at times.

There are even, I think, some romantic-sounding forms of melancholy: the German idea of weltschmerz - a yearning sense of "world-sorrow" and unfocused sadness for humanity: or the French nostalgie du passé, that bittersweet Proustian condition of longing for the past, with a rueful sense of regret for missed chances and lost opportunities.

I also rather like mal du pays - the exile's yearning for the country of childhood, and it comes to me in flashes, both in the spring and autumn, when I think of Irish country lanes, and the smell of fields of mown hay. Ah, bonjour tristesse!

No doubt we are better off for shedding much of the stigma surrounding mental illness - but with it, have we lost some of the variety, the dark poetry of the human condition?

Kittens

2010-09-18T02:29:00.000-07:00

http://asofterworld.com/

It was always thus

2010-08-21T04:47:00.000-07:00

“That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose.” J. D. Salinger

Alone

2010-08-01T00:53:00.001-07:00

Living Buddha is dead

2010-07-29T23:52:00.000-07:00

Tokyo's 'oldest man' had been dead for 30 years

Officials had planned a birthday celebration to honour Mr Kato but they found him dead

He was thought to be the oldest man in Tokyo - but when officials went to congratulate Sogen Kato on his 111th birthday, they uncovered mummified skeletal remains lying in his bed.

Mr Kato may have been dead for 30 years according to Japanese authorities.

They grew suspicious when they went to honour Mr Kato at his address in Adachi ward, but his granddaughter told them he "doesn't want to see anybody".

Police are now investigating the family on possible fraud charges.

Welfare officials had tried to meet Mr Kato since early this year. But when they went to visit, family members repeatedly chased them away, according to Tomoko Iwamatsu, an Adachi ward official.

Authorities grew suspicious and sought an investigation by police, who forced their way into the house on Wednesday.

They discovered a mummified body, believed to be Kato, lying in his bed, wearing underwear and pyjamas, covered with a blanket.

Mr Kato's relatives told police that he had "confined himself in his room more than 30 years ago and became a living Buddha," according to a report by Jiji Press.

But the family had received 9.5 million yen ($109,000) in widower's pension payments via Mr Kato's bank account since his wife died six years ago, and some of the money had recently been withdrawn.

The pension fund had long been unable to contact Mr Kato.

"His family must have known he has been dead all these years and acted as if nothing happened. It's so eerie," said Yutaka Muroi, a Tokyo metropolitan welfare official.

Mu

2010-06-19T10:10:00.000-07:00

A pilgrim of the way asked the Grand Master Zhaozhou, "Does a dog have Buddha nature or not?"

Zhaozhou said, "Mu."

Dandy Zen

2010-06-19T05:16:00.000-07:00

"You may look back on your life and accept it as good or evil. But it is far, far harder to admit that you have been completely unimportant; that in the great sum of things all a man's endless grapplings are no more significant than the scuttlings of a cockroach. The universe is neither friendly nor hostile. It is merely indifferent. This makes me ecstatic. I have reached a nirvana of negativity. I can look futility in the face and still see promise in the stars."
— Sebastian Horsley

LIFE Is Just The Choice Between FEAR and LOVE

2010-06-15T12:30:00.000-07:00

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped. We are all absolutely free. If everybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled — by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even. All existing society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses. Ten people who know would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists.

- Robert Anton Wilson

These ideas are not new. In the Dhammapada the Buddha teaches;

We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with an impure mind
And trouble will follow you
As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.

We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with a pure mind
And happiness will follow you
As your shadow, unshakable.

I have allowed my thoughts to make a world I do not wish to live in. I have allowed nihilism to fill my dull my awareness.

Where is the Dhamma?

2010-06-13T04:57:00.000-07:00

Q: Is it advisable to read a lot or study the scriptures as a part of practice?

Answer: The Dhamma of the Buddha is not found in books. If you want to really see for yourself what the Buddha was talking about, you don't need to bother with books. Watch your own mind. Examine to see how feelings come and go, how thoughts come and go. don't be attached to anything. Just be mindful of whatever there is to see. This is the way to the truths of the Buddha. Be natural.

Everything you do in your life here is a chance to practise. It is all Dhamma. When you do your chores, try to be mindful. If you are emptying a spittoon or cleaning a toilet, don't feel you are doing it as a favour for anyone else. There is Dhamma in emptying spittoons.

Don't feel you are practising only when sitting still, cross-legged. Some of you have complained that there is not enough time to meditate. Is there enough time to breathe? This is your meditation: mindfulness, naturalness in whatever you do.

Q: What about other methods of practice? These days there seem to be so many teachers and so many different systems of meditation that it is confusing.

Answer: It is like going into town. One can approach from the north,from the southeast, from many roads. Often these systems just differ outwardly. Whether you walk one way or another, fast or slow, if you are mindful, it is all the same. There is one essential point that all good practice must eventually come to--not clinging. In the end, all meditation systems must be let go of. Neither can one cling to the teacher. If a system leads to relinquishment, to not clinging, then it is correct practice.

You may wish to travel, to visit other teachers and try other systems.Some of you have already done so. This is a natural desire. You will find out that a thousand questions asked and knowledge of many systems will not bring you to the truth. Eventually you will get bored. You will see that only by stopping and examining your own mind can you find our what the Buddha talked about. No need to go searching outside yourself. Eventually you must return to face your own true nature. Here is where you can understand the Dhamma.

Venerable Ajahn Chah Subhaddo (Chao Khun Bodhinyana Thera) (Thai: ชา สุภัทโท, alternatively spelled Achaan Chah, occasionally with honorific titles Luang Por and Phra; 17 June 1918 – 16 January 1992) was an influential teacher of the Buddhadharma and a founder of two major monasteries in the Thai Forest Tradition.

Respected and loved in his own country as a man of great wisdom, he was also instrumental in establishing Theravada Buddhism in the West. Beginning in 1979 with the founding of Cittaviveka (commonly known as Chithurst Buddhist Monastery) ^[1] in the United Kingdom, the Thai Forest Tradition of Ajahn Chah has spread throughout Europe, the United States and the British Commonwealth. The dhamma talks of Ajahn Chah have been recorded, transcribed and translated into several languages.

More than one million people, including the Thai royal family, attended Ajahn Chah's funeral in 1992.^[2]. He left behind a legacy of dhamma talks, students, and monasteries.

Zen - Health Warning!

2010-06-09T23:55:00.000-07:00

It seems that Zen practice can lead to paranoid delusions.

Self styled Zen Monk Enlightened Master and Porno Punk Buddhist Brad Warner has been ranting on the interweb for some time about the evils of Big Mind.

What, for some, takes the edge off Brad's rantings is his admission that he has never actually attended any Big Mind events :)

Now it seems that Brad sees the evil influence of Genpo Roshi /Dennis Merzel at work in sabotaging his European Zen Tour.

Brad writes on his blog;

This is an interesting example of how an idea can control people in much the same way a domineering and authoritative leader can do so, thus allowing the leader himself to seem above such things. Which is my way of saying that while Genpo Roshi himself does not appear to have given any orders to his followers to ban me from Amsterdam, the results have turned out quite the same as if he had. In other words the idea that I might offend someone succeeded in barring me from a place to run a standard-issue zazen-kai in Amsterdam. I'm not barred every place in town, certainly. But in the real world you don't have access to every place in town. And when you set something up & it gets canceled at the last minute it's hard to get something else together. This is something the folks who complained about me understood.

However, a closer look at what Brad wrote seems to indicate that the talk was NOT cancelled by the zendo owners but rather by the third party who organised the event and invited Brad to give the talk.

And at least one person claiming to be a member of the zendo was unaware of any negative comments by the zendo membership.

It seems probable that the third party made an a mistaken assumption that someone may be offended and so cancelled the talk. No hidden influence at work by Genpo :)

Brad raves on in the comments section;

Info, I'm not saying there was any conspiracy involved. There doesn't need to be. That's the beauty of it.

I've heard good things about Nico. And as I said, Nico did not cancel the event. It was canceled by the people who organized it for me.

I did not mention that a second event in Nijmegen was also canceled for similar reasons. It was to be held at a different place in the same lineage. In that case the event was moved to another location.

Whether Genpo is actually behind any of this, I don't know. But I hope he is. Maybe I'm bothering him. Good. Maybe he'll stop swindling people. But probably not.

Big Mind® is the single worst thing that's happened to Zen since it came to the West, bar none.

Some suspect that Genpo would respond...'who the fuck is Brad Warner?'

It may be that Brad feels the need to keep the punk flame alive by sticking it to the man.

Unfortunately for Brad it does help if you actually put together some kind of reasoned argument when demonizing someone. When Brad write "Maybe I'm bothering him." is sounds a bit like a small child being naughty in the hopes that their parent may notice them and pay them some attention.

When looking around for a zen master to follow the choice between 'megabucks enlightenment' and 'porno zen' seems unappealing.

I think i'll stick with Master Bankei...he has the good sense to be dead and so does not host expensive seminars or post paranoid ravings on the net :)

Tips

2010-05-14T11:45:00.000-07:00

Jack Kerouac’s list of 30 hints and tips for writers.

Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
Submissive to everything, open, listening
Try never get drunk outside yr own house
Be in love with yr life
Something that you feel will find its own form
Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
Blow as deep as you want to blow
Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
The unspeakable visions of the individual
No time for poetry but exactly what is
Visionary tics shivering in the chest
In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
Like Proust be an old teahead of time
Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
Accept loss forever
Believe in the holy contour of life
Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
Don’t think of words when you stop but to see picture better
Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
You’re a Genius all the time
Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

Thanks to Tim for this.

Ninjas

2010-05-13T23:26:00.000-07:00

We're horribly mundane, aggressively mundane individuals. We're the ninjas of the mundane, you might say.

Andy Partridge

Buddada

2010-05-03T02:31:00.000-07:00

“Dada means nothing. We want to change the world with nothing.”

Choice

2010-04-24T02:53:00.001-07:00

“There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.” Henry David Thoreau

Ruskin

2010-04-05T01:53:00.000-07:00

"Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness. "

John Ruskin

...

2010-03-27T13:05:00.000-07:00

“We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.

Orson Welles

''I do not want your admiration now, because I do not want your insults in the future. I bear with my loneliness now in order to avoid greater loneliness in the years ahead. You see, loneliness is the price we have to pay for being born in this modern age, so full of freedom, independence, and our own egotistical selves''.

Kokoro by Natsume Soseki

Things I can do without

2010-03-24T16:12:00.000-07:00

Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Field Manual

2010-03-14T00:31:00.000-08:00

News from the 1st Earth Battalion website of a new Field Manual in the works;

Its been over thirty years since the first field manual for the First Earth Battalion was printed by the the USArmy and methinks its now time for a more expanded version ... this time... we again reach forward to the very edge of what we know and can imagine will be important. Unlike normal manuals with objective processes and an overall strategy, we again will be more like a whole earth catelogue with a wide variety of conscious tactics to be bundled as the seeker wishes.

What follows is a brainstorm on needed skills and actions. Notice we are entering the Galactic Age and so preparing ourselves for that emergence is part and parcel of getting ready for a better future. Please feel free to send in some of your own thoughts.

=====================================================

OUTLINE FOR NEW EARTH ARMY MANUAL
As I reach for the best I can be

=====================================================

Always living with wonder as a calling

Living in touch with all senses when not on a specifc purpose

Co-creating with the earth and other heavenly beings

Having compassion for animals and their habitat

Birthing the garden with splendor and wit

Seeking to purge the limitations and fixations that blind us

Innovatively choosing to be kind to myself

Mastering the art of harmony

Providing a sanctuary for my chosen family

Manifesting new realities by dreaming them awake

Leading the charge to make a paradise on earth

Inspiring all beings with their best choices

Giving love in the most tender kind of ways

Having a situational awareness as my form of genius

Finding rapture where ever it is available

Attending to the ancestral connections that are mine

Empowering all those I can with being all they can be

Producing integral success w/ star systems alliances

Archiving my eternal arc of time and service

Becoming a champion of new reality acceptance

Absorbing and feeling the miraculous nature of life itself

Serving the creation of conscious evolution

Groking and sharing the nature of creation

Becoming adept at inter-dimensional realities

Identifying linguistically the emerging nature of reality

Being a tender family and Ohana player

Expanding others awareness as a form of healing

Expressing my fullest awareness in the fullest way

Making peace among any factions I can effect

Believing in the finite goodness of the universe

Inventing the new integral footprints for living

Transmitting joy and love thru many media

Carrying my loving relationships into eternal joy

Being a loving parent

Creating a new earth army with biospheric missions

Continuing this scanning process with study and diligence

Send thoughts to

Jim Channon
19 Feb 2010

STFU

2010-03-07T02:22:00.000-08:00

I find myself caught up in life. This does not improve my sense of well-being.

So it is time to try the ancient practice of STFU.

“Silence is a source of great strength.” Lao Tzu

Right speech is the first principle of ethical conduct in the eightfold path. Ethical conduct is viewed as a guideline to moral discipline, which supports the other principles of the path. This aspect is not self-sufficient, however, essential, because mental purification can only be achieved through the cultivation of ethical conduct. The importance of speech in the context of Buddhist ethics is obvious: words can break or save lives, make enemies or friends, start war or create peace. Buddha explained right speech as follows:

1. to abstain from false speech, especially not to tell deliberate lies and not to speak deceitfully,

2. to abstain from slanderous speech and not to use words maliciously against others,

3. to abstain from harsh words that offend or hurt others, and 4. to abstain from idle chatter that lacks purpose or depth. Positively phrased, this means to tell the truth, to speak friendly, warm, and gently and to talk only when necessary.

With lack of awareness 2 and 3 become more likely. I am going to try and speak only that which adds to my well-being and the well-being of all other beings.

Wish me luck :)

You can give up anything

2010-02-20T13:25:00.000-08:00

You can give up anything when you're following your heart
I never had the time to show I could depart
with my whole being, go back to the start
Oh I promised more in vows then I ever give with my heart
but I'll be lonely
Oh I'll be lonely
Oh I'll be lonely
oh again

Broken hearts are a fickle thing and complicated too
I thought I believed in love but I've never seen it through
Oh I didn't marry the girl I loved
I saw my world cave in, felt like giving up
but I'll be laughing
Oh I'll be laughing
Oh I'll be laughing
oh again

I've been looking for hope these days
but loves not finding me
but now my hearts been broken there is nothing you can do
I'm impenetrable to pain
Oh, you can break my broken heart
Oh no, you can break my broken heart

Twisting Reality

2010-01-16T08:22:00.001-08:00

Tilting at windmills

2010-01-09T11:26:00.000-08:00

“Everything is artifice or illusion.” Don Quixote

Is knowing you don't know enough?

2010-01-04T11:31:00.000-08:00

The search for certitude - like the pretense of moral righteousness - appears to me as a medieval habit that should have vanished long ago. None of us knows enough to be certain about anything, usually, and none of us are nearly as 'moral' as we feel obliged to pretend we are in order to be acceptable to 'Decent' Society.
If we are not totally stupid and blindly selfish on all possible occasions, we are about as bright and ethical as anyone in history has ever been. The greatest batters in the history of baseball all had batting averages well below 0.500, which means they missed more than half the time they swung. Medieval morality and theology have left us with the hypocritical habit of pretending batting averages close to 0.999 in both knowledge and ethics. (The Absolutists go around talking and acting as if their averages were actually 1.000 or sheer perfection.) On average, I think I score under Babe Ruth and I suspect you do, too.
There thus appears to be a great deal of conceit and self - deception in the habitual poses of intellectual certitude and ethical perfection among the educated classes. It would appear more in keeping with honesty, I think, to recognize, as analogous to Murphy's Law, the unscientific but useful generalization I call the Cosmic Schmuck Principle.
The Cosmic Schmuck Principle holds that if you don't wake up, once a month at least, and realize that you have been acting like a Cosmic Schmuck again then you will probably go on acting like a cosmic schmuck forever; but if you do, occasionally, recognize your Cosmic Schmuckiness, then you might begin to become a little less Schmucky that the general human average at this primitive stage of terrestrial evolution.

Page 22 - 23
Natural Law
or Don't Put A Rubber On Your Willy PDF
by Robert Anton Wilson

New Year

2009-12-31T10:55:00.000-08:00

New Year's eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights.

Hamilton Wright Mabie

Contrary

2009-12-22T09:09:00.000-08:00

In praise of bloody-mindedness
By Finlo Rohrer
BBC News Magazine

The way Rage Against The Machine were propelled to the top of the charts in place of the latest manicured X Factor act shows a quality that runs through British life like a stick of rock. But why do people like to be so bloody-minded?

"Sheer bloody-mindedness" is usually bandied about in an insulting fashion, used to categorise obstructive officialdom, obstreperous uncles and cantankerous children.
But is there something noble in the desire to not do what you are told?

Recent years are full of glorious examples of semi-organised resistance against "them" - the forces of authority, commerce and enforced taste.
It very often shows itself in resistance to polls where the participants have been subtly channelled towards certain choices.
One campaign that can be considered as successful as the recent chart outing came in 2001. An e-mail exhorted census respondents in the UK - as well as Australia and New Zealand - to put their religion as Jedi.
The clue to the bloody-mindedness was in the plea that census respondents should do it either for their love of "the Force" or "just to annoy people". For many, the thought of anonymous serried ranks of civil servants having their neat boxes spoilt was a compelling one.
In the event, officialdom was compelled to be fairly good humoured, in the UK at least. The census takers created the counting code "896 Jedi Knight" and announced the numbers in a press release entitled "390,000 Jedis There Are". Brighton and Hove came out best with 2.6% responding Jedi.

In Australia the naughty Jedi were threatened with fines.
BBC Sports Personality of the Year has in the past provided countless opportunities for the bloody-minded to upset the applecart.

In response to the BBC trailers featuring the stars of football, rugby, tennis, golf, cricket and athletics, for several years in the 1990s angling magazines tried to get one of their own to the top of the pile.
In 1991 it was reported that angler Bob Nudd received a welter of votes, but it was distance runner Liz McColgan who won the award.
Several years ago, a vote to name a stand in Manchester City's new stadium prompted shenanigans. There was a suspicion that non-Manchester City fans were attempting to hijack the vote by backing former star Colin Bell in the hope the stand in question would be forever lumbered with an embarrassing name.
Again the club showed its sense of humour by responding to the pleas of City fans and keeping Bell's moniker, making it the Colin Bell Stand.
But there is a serious side to bloody-mindedness. The same resistance to being economically or culturally steered can be one of the drivers for political campaigns, says cultural historian Joe Moran, author of Queuing for Beginners.

"There is quite a long British tradition of localism and scepticism towards state power, and after World War II this was refuelled by widespread resentments about the survival of wartime red tape and rationing."
It can be seen in the Ealing comedies from the period, he says. Passport to Pimlico, The Titfield Thunderbolt and Whisky Galore "celebrate the cussedness of the little people in the face of authority".
This strain of resistance saw its zenith in the fight against the retention of wartime ID cards into the 1950s.
"There was a famous campaign involving a liberal councillor, Harry Willcock, who in 1950 was stopped for speeding on Ballard's Lane in Finchley, and the policeman asked to see his identity card," says Mr Moran.
"Willcock refused and he managed to turn this incident into a national campaign against the use of identity cards in peacetime, culminating in a mass rally in Hyde Park."
The case ended up in the appeal court where his conviction was upheld but the police were attacked for demanding ID cards for minor offences.
Mr Willcock's modern inheritors are those who oppose the latest incarnation of the ID card, wheelie bin imposition and the ban on smoking indoors.
While spurred on by newspaper campaigns, little battles against the street scene-spoiling wheelies are being fought the length and breadth of the country.
It is not just that people have practical and aesthetic objections to the new arrivals, but more fundamentally they dislike being told what to do by uncompromising councils.

The same feeling led to the small handful of libertarians who communicated to news organisations like the BBC their intention to take up cigarettes in response to the smoking ban. If that is not the ultimate political manifestation of bloody-mindedness, what is?
There is an over-arching impulse that drives people to resist.
"They think to themselves we are preventing ourselves being marshalled into this," says writer and broadcaster Simon Fanshawe.
But these acts of rebellion might seem strange, particularly to those in the US who note the British docility in the face of bad customer service and transport chaos.
"We queue meekly like no other nation on earth," says Fanshawe. "We are always doing what we are told. Maybe we can't bear it any longer. It is a distrust of the notion of authority."
There is, of course, no British monopoly on bloody-mindedness.
In plenty of other countries, people question why they have to take off their boots, or stand in a particular place or wear a particular shirt.
But there will always be a special place for bloody-mindedness in the British psyche.

Smoke em if you got em

2009-12-19T10:10:00.000-08:00

I ventured out into the cold December morning to visit my local tobacconist.

I would describe the guy running the shop as 'old school', and he certainly seems to know his stuff. I had a vague intention of buying an aromatic brand name tobacco aromatic blend, maybe Danish Black Vanilla or High Society (as recommended in The Chap). Oh no, that didn't happen! I asked the proprietor for a recommendation of a good aromatic pipe tobacco...and he reached towards the sacred jars.

He opened the lids of various jars and I inhaled the rich aromas that emanated. A hint of fruit, caramel, liquorice and rum...my senses where transported towards the sublime. After much sniffing and discussion of the various flavours I decided upon some 'kentucky nougat' and 'american delite' [sic] (both by Gawith Hoggarth I believe).

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Now playing: New Radicals - You Get What You Give
via FoxyTunes

My chosen path

2009-12-14T13:24:00.000-08:00

“I am responsible. Although I may not be able to prevent the worst from happening, I am responsible for my attitude toward the inevitable misfortunes that darken life. Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have – life itself.” Walter Anderson

"I choose to sit in perpetual sadness", those may be the most beautiful words I have ever read.

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Now playing: KING CRIMSON - epitaph
via FoxyTunes

Track 12

2009-12-13T01:41:00.000-08:00

Zimoun : Sound Sculptures & Installations | Compilation Video V1.5 from ZIMOUN VIDEO ARCHIVE on Vimeo.

'Guess again,' Sheringham said.
Maxted clipped on the headphones, carefully settled them over his ears. He concentrated as the disc began to spin, trying to catch some echo of identity.
The sound was a rapid metallic rustling, like iron filings splashing through a funnel. It ran for ten seconds, repeated itself a dozen times, then ended abruptly in a string of blips.
'Well?' Sheringham asked. 'What is it?'
Maxted pulled off his headphones, rubed one of his ears. He had been listening to the records for hours and his ears felt bruised and numb.
'Could be anything. An ice-cube melting?'
Sheringham shook his head, his little beard wagging.
Maxted shrugged. 'A couple of galaxies colliding?'
'No. Sound waves don't ravel through space. I'll give you a clue. It's one of those proverbial sounds.' He seemed to be enjoying the catechism.
Maxted lit a cigarette, threw the match onto the laboratory bench. The head melted a tiny pool of wax, froze and left a shallow black scar. He watched it pleasurably, conscious of Sheringham fidgeting beside him.
He pumped his brains for an obscene similie. 'What about a fly -'
'Time's up,' Sheringham cut in. 'A pin dropping.' He took the 3-inch disc off the player, angled it into its sleeve.
'In actual fall, that is, not impact. We used a fifty-foot shalft and eight microphones. I thought you'd get that one.'

J G Ballard, Track 12. (1958)

Thanks to Tim for the heads-up.
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Now playing: FM3 - buddha machine08
via FoxyTunes

Ralph Rumney

2009-12-03T11:57:00.000-08:00

Rumney spent much of his life living as a wanderer, and was variously described as both a ‘recluse’ and a ‘media whore’, seeing his existence as a ‘permanent adventure and endless experiment.’ He moved, as his friend Guy Atkins said, “between penury and almost absurd affluence. One visited him in a squalid room in London’s Neal Street, in a house shared with near down-and-outs. Next, one would find him in Harry’s Bar in Venice, or at a Max Ernst opening in Paris. He seemed to take poverty with more equanimity than riches.”

My Way

2009-11-24T00:01:00.000-08:00

William Shatner... the force is strong in this one!

Time to consume again

2009-11-15T13:10:00.000-08:00

I stopped doing christmas a few years back. It was not complicated, I just told all the people I know that I would no longer be sending out cards and gifts and didn't want anything from them. The world did not end, my friends and family did not disown me, and this year some others have joined me (for their own reasons) in rejecting the holiday of mass consumption.

Freed of the expectation of gift giving, one can reconnect with what I consider the true spirit of christmas. Spending time with the people you want to spend time with. Not placing a value on the friendship or family relationship based on the cost of a gift.

Reverend Billy and the Life After Shopping Gospel Choir believe that Consumerism is overwhelming our lives. The corporations want us to have experiences only through their products.

Our neighborhoods, "commons" places like stoops and parks and streets and libraries, are disappearing into the corporatized world of big boxes and chain stores. But if we "back away from the product" – even a little bit, well then we Put The Odd Back In God!

The supermodels fly away and we're left with our original sensuality. So we are singing and preaching for local economies and real – not mediated through products – experience.

We like independent shops where you know the person behind the counter or at least –you like them enough to share a story.We ask that local activists who are defending themselves against supermalls, nuke plants, gentrification – call us and we'll come and put on our "Fabulous Worship!"

Remember children... Love is a Gift Economy! — The Rev

Amen!

2012 and all that.

2009-11-15T00:38:00.000-08:00

Chatting outside the court that morning, the chief prosecutor says: “This case has taken my breath away. It is the ugliest and evilest case I can remember. It is not just the facts are grim, but the characters involved - they seem to be completely without any normal human emotion."

I ask him what he thinks happened to the minds of Ah Map’s torturers. "I think they went mad without realising it,” he says. “Living together in that flat, high on drugs, they started to believe their world was normal. They had only themselves against which to measure their sense of human decency. Torture became a game for them. In their twisted minds it became acceptable." Later, reading these notes back, I wonder if they don’t apply to the whole city.

The media hype over 2012 (the end of days...yadda yadda yadda) is gaining momentum with the release of eponymous big budget apocalypse movie. These predictions are based on the the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar. Some people claim that this predicts the 'end of days', whilst others make a more modest prediction for a radical change , entering a new era (which might be good or bad depending on your personal tatste).

I wonder why we, as a species, crave the end of days? Is the here-and-now so uncomfortable that an escape, any escape, is better than being present in this very moment? The idea of a global apocalypse absolves us of any responsibility for living our own life, we cannot prevent on future event and so our current actions are meaningless.

The second false view is nihilism or the view held by the nihilists who claim that there is no life after death. This view belongs to a materialistic philosophy which refuses to accept knowledge of mental conditionality.

To subscribe to a philosophy of materialism is to understand life only partially. Nihilism ignores the side of life which is concerned with mental conditionality. If one claims that after the passing away or ceasing of a life, it does not come to be again, the continuity of mental conditions is denied.

To understand life, we must consider all conditions, both mental and material. When we understand mental and material conditions, we cannot say that there is no life after death and that there is no further becoming after passing away. This nihilist view of existence is considered false because it is based on incomplete understanding of reality. That is why nihilism was also rejected by the Buddha.

The teaching of kamma is enough to prove that the Buddha did not teach annihilation after death; Buddhism accepts 'survival' not in the sense of an eternal soul, but in the sense of a renewed becoming.

So December 21st 2012 will be a time of change, of renewal, of that we can be certain. But so will today, tomorrow and indeed the second in which I am living right now.

Things change and continue to do so according to the changing conditions on which they depend. When we analyse things into their elements or into reality, we cannot find any abiding entity, any everlasting thing.

Like fawns and shapeshifters

2009-11-09T11:27:00.000-08:00

Inside a boy
I found the universe
And in his eyes are a thousand stars
On a dark sky
Ooooh
Ooooh

We are clouds, we are whispers
Like fawns and shapeshifters
Our ages can never be found out
Our edges keep moving farther on

We are stars colliding,
though we crash like lightning
into love. Love.
In his arms, I'm alive.
From his kiss, I'm falling into love.

We are stars colliding,
though we crash like lightning
into love. Love

Ray-fishing at Lagoon West

2009-11-04T12:45:00.000-08:00

The beach fatigue from which I suffered numbed the senses insidiously, blunting despair and hope alike.

J G Ballard. Studio 5, The Stars (1961)

Vermilion Sands

2009-11-03T12:59:00.000-08:00

Most of us were suffering from various degrees of beach fatigue, that chronic malaise which exiles the victim to a limbo of endless sunbathing, dark glasses and afternoon terraces.

JG Ballard - Studio 5, The Stars (1961)

Popularism

2009-10-29T01:05:00.000-07:00

The Buddha said his path to awakening was one of rebellion – a subversive path that is against greed, against hatred, and against delusion. It is a path of radical, engaged transformation, a path of finding freedom and spending the rest of our lives giving it away. It is a path that goes Against the Stream.

We need to have courage to go 'against the stream'. Courage to sit, to look deeply and understand how Universe works, our place within Universe. Buddha teaches...

Who will comprehend this earth,
the world of Yama, and the gods?
Who will discern the well-taught Dhamma
as one who’s skilled selects a flower.

One Trained will comprehend this earth,
the world of Yama, and the gods,
One Trained discern the well-taught Dhamma
as one who’s skilled selects a flower.

There is often lively debate (and little agreement) amongst Buddhists with regards to drugs. I would prefer that prohibition was removed. That being unlikely, I at least hope that our legislators would engage in a mature debate based upon evidence rather than dogma.

This is unfortunately not the case.

Cannabis evidence 'was devalued'

The row over the reclassification of cannabis has been reignited after the government's chief drug adviser accused ministers of "devaluing" the evidence.

Professor David Nutt, who heads the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, says it does not cause major health problems.

He accused ex-home secretary Jacqui Smith, who reclassified the drug, of "devaluing" scientific research.

The Home Office said these opinions "do not reflect the views of government".

A spokesman said: "Prof Nutt's views are his own."

He added: "The government is clear: we are determined to crack down on all illegal substances and minimise their harm to health and society as a whole."

It comes after Prof Nutt used a lecture at King's College in London and briefing paper to attack what he called the "artificial" separation of alcohol and tobacco from other, illegal, drugs.

Precautionary measure

The professor said smoking cannabis created only a "relatively small risk" of psychotic illness, and claimed those who advocated moving ecstasy into Class B from Class A had "won the intellectual argument".

Public concern over the links between high-strength cannabis, known as skunk, and mental illness led the government to reclassify cannabis to Class B from C last year.

The decision was taken despite official advisers recommending against the change.

Ministers said they wanted to make the move as a precautionary measure.

The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) review of cannabis classification, which was ordered in 2007, was the result of a "skunk scare", according to the professor.

In his lecture and briefing paper, entitled Estimating Drug Harms: A Risky Business?, he repeated his claim that the risks of taking ecstasy are no worse than riding a horse.

Prof Nutt also warned that the reclassification decision may lead to more people taking the drug.

"It may be that if you move a drug up a class it has a greater cachet", he said, adding the government's approach "starts to distort the value of evidence".

“ If you think that scaring kids will stop them using, you are probably wrong ”
Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs

He cited research which "estimates that, to prevent one episode of schizophrenia, we would need to stop about 5,000 men aged 20 to 25 years from ever using the drug".

He said skunk has been in wide usage for about 10 years but, he claims, there has been no upswing in schizophrenia.

The professor accepts cannabis can sometimes cause mental illness, but argues it is safer than tobacco and alcohol and, overall, does not lead to major health problems.

Prof Nutt said: "We have to accept young people like to experiment - with drugs and other potentially harmful activities - and what we should be doing in all of this is to protect them from harm at this stage of their lives.

"We therefore have to provide more accurate and credible information. If you think that scaring kids will stop them using, you are probably wrong."

Following these comments, a spokesman for the ACMD said: "The lecture Prof Nutt gave at King's College was in his academic capacity and was not in his role as chair of the ACMD.

"We acknowledge that the lecture has prompted further debate on the harms of drugs."

Fear is the mind killer

2009-10-26T00:39:00.000-07:00

Scary, Big Brotheresque video from the US. But it couldn't happen in Britain...wrong!

Doth I protest too much?

When police admit you could be put on a secret database for being at a demo, it's time to worry

- Mark Thomas
- guardian.co.uk, Sunday 25 October 2009 20.30 GMT

I was sent the now notorious "police spotter card" through the post. It's an official laminated card for "police eyes only" and labelled as coming from "CO11 Public Order Intelligence Unit". The card contained the photographs of 24 anti-arms trade protesters, unnamed but lettered A to X. My picture appeared as photo H. You can imagine my reaction at finding I was the subject of a secret police surveillance process … I was delighted. I phoned my agent and told him I was suspect H. He replied: "Next year we'll get you top billing … suspect A."
The Metropolitan police circulated the card specifically for the Docklands biannual arms fair in London to help its officers identify "people at specific events who may instigate offences or disorder". Which is such a flattering quote I am thinking of having it on my next tour poster. While being wanted outside the arms fair, I was legitimately inside researching a book on the subject, and uncovered four companies illegally promoting "banned" torture equipment. Questions were later asked in the Commons as to why HM Revenue & Customs and the police didn't spot it. Though, in fairness, none of the torture traders featured on the spotter card.
What exactly was I doing that was so awfully wrong as to merit this attention? Today's Guardian revelations of three secret police units goes some way to explain the targeting of protesters and raises worrying questions. The job of these units is to spy on protesters, and collate and circulate information about them. Protesters – or, as the police call them, "domestic extremists" – are the new "reds under the bed".
Many of those targeted by the police have committed no crime and are guilty only of non-violent direct action. So it is worth reminding ourselves that protest is legal. Sorry if this sounds obvious, but you might have gained the impression that if three police units are spying on and targeting thousands, then those people must be up to something illegal.
The very phrase "domestic extremist" defines protesters in the eyes of the police as the problem, the enemy. Spying on entire groups and organisations, and targeting the innocent, undermines not only our rights but the law – frightfully silly of me to drag this into an argument about policing, I know.
Protest is part of the democratic process. It wasn't the goodwill of politicians that led them to cancel developing countries' debt, but the protests and campaigning of millions of ordinary people around the world. The political leaders were merely the rubber stamp in the democratic process. Thus any targeting and treatment of demonstrators (at the G20 for example) that creates a "chilling effect" – deterring those who may wish to exercise their right to protest – is profoundly undemocratic.
No police, secret or otherwise, should operate without proper accountability. So how are these three units accountable? Who has access to the databases? How long does information remain in the system? What effect could it have on travel and future employment of those targeted? How closely do these units work with corporate private investigators, and does the flow of information go both ways? Do the police target strikers?
A police spokesman has said that anyone who finds themselves on a database "should not worry at all". When a spokesman for the three secret units will not disclose a breakdown of their budgets, and two of the three will not even name who heads their operations (even MI6 gave us an initial, for God's sake), then the words "should not worry at all" are meaningless. Indeed, when the police admit that someone could end up on a secret police database merely for attending a demonstration, it is exactly the time to worry.

“Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.” - Thomas Jefferson

Io Cthulhu!

2009-10-03T13:45:00.001-07:00

The nature of...

2009-10-02T11:41:00.000-07:00

I can barely
conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy.

Charles Baudelaire

All this talk of getting on

2009-10-01T11:33:00.000-07:00

I know i'll see your face again

I can't get no....

2009-10-01T10:58:00.000-07:00

Insomnia please release me and let me dream...

I have been having trouble getting a 'normal' nights sleep for some time (years). Due to changes at work I am also having a relapse of my depression. So methinks it would be a good idea to try an natural herbal remedy for my insomnia, maybe a few good nights sleep will make things look a bit better.

There are lots of these remedies available, and I decided to try Natrasleep because it is vegetarian/vegan friendly :)

Contains ingredients:

Hops powder extract 5:1 (33.4mg) equivalent to 167mg of hops powder, valerian powder extract 4:1 (62.5mg) equivalent to 250mg of valerian powder.

Each film coated tablet also contains calcium phosphate, croscarmellose sodium, microcrystalline cellulose, silicone dioxide, magnesium stearate, maltodextrin, glucose syrup, hypromellose, purified talc, titanium dioxide (E171), copper chlorophyllin (E141), vegetable carbon black (E153).

I took 2 on Tuesday night...and no effect whatsoever. I took 3 last night...and still no effect. I'm going to keep trying with them for a few more nights to see if they have any effect but so far it is not looking good.

I don't really want to end up on prescription drugs such as Benzodiazepines, and i've spent years avoiding Antidepressants. Unfortunately I find that meditation (regular practice rather than occasional sessions) triggers my depression, I have no idea why but it does.

The seven causes of anxiety

2009-09-17T13:38:00.000-07:00

Mozi said: There are seven causes of worry to a state and they are:

(1) When the outer and the inner city walls are not defensible;

(2) When an enemy state is approaching and yet one's neighbours do not come to the rescue;

(3) When the resources of the people have all been spent on useless enterprises and gifts all squandered upon incapable men, when people's resources are exhausted without producing any profit and the treasury is emptied by entertaining idle company;

(4) When the officials value only their salaries, and the sophists only friendship, and when the subordinates dare not remonstrate against the laws the ruler has made for persecution;

(5) When the lord is over-confident of his own wisdom and holds no consultation, when he feels he is secure and makes no preparations against attack; and when he does not know that he must be watchful while neighbours are planning against him;

(6) When those trusted are not loyal and the loyal are not trusted;

(7) When the crops are not sufficient for food and the ministers can not be charged with responsibilities, and when awards fail to make people happy and punishment to make them afraid. With these seven causes present in the maintenance of the state, the state will perish, and, in the defence of a city, the city will be reduced to ruin by the approaching enemy. Wherever these seven causes are found, the country will face calamity.

...for the moment, alive.

2009-08-11T00:17:00.000-07:00

From the film Synecdoche, New York

"I will be dying and so will you, and so will everyone here. That's what I want to explore. We're all hurtling towards death, yet here we are for the moment, alive. Each of us knowing we're going to die, each of us secretly believing we won't"

The Zen of Piaf

2009-05-19T12:30:00.000-07:00

No! Nothing at all
No! I regret nothing
Neither the good things
Nor the bad – they’re all the same to me!

No! Nothing at all
No! I regret nothing
It’s been paid for, swept away, forgotten
I don’t give a damn about the past!

My memories
I have burnt my memories
My sorrows, my pleasures
I don’t need them any more

Swept away, the love affairs
And all their tremblings
Swept away for ever
I am starting anew

No! Nothing at all
No! I regret nothing
Neither the good things
Nor the bad – they’re all the same to me!

No! Nothing at all
No! I regret nothing
For my life, for my joys
Today, they start with you!

Happy Wesak

2009-05-10T14:29:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel like throwing my hands up in the air
I know I can count on you

Sometimes I feel like saying, "Lord, I just don't care"
But you've got the love I need to see me through

Sometimes I see that the going is just too rough
And things go wrong no matter what I do
Now it feels like life is just too much
You've got the love I need to see me through

Sometimes I feel like throwing my hands up in the air
I know I can count on you

Sometimes I feel like saying, "Lord, I just don't care"
But you've got the love I need to see me through

Time after time I say, "Oh Lord what's the use?"
Time after time I say, "This just won't do"
But sooner or later in life the things you love you lose
Just like before, I know I call you

Occasionally by thoughts are brave and friends are few
Occasionally I cry out "Lord, what must I do"
Occasionally I call up "Master make me new"
You've got the love I need to see me through

Sometimes I feel like throwing my hands up in the air
I know I can count on you

Sometimes I feel like saying, "Lord, I just don't care"
But you've got the love I need to see me through

You've got the love

I need to see me through

You've got the love, yov've got the love, you've got the love
You've got the love, you've got the love, you've got the love

Gorged with Meaning

2009-05-02T06:27:00.000-07:00

The skylines lit up at dead of night, the air-conditioning systems cooling empty hotels in the desert and artificial light in the middle of the day all have something both demented and admirable about them. The mindless luxury of a rich civilization, and yet of a civilization perhaps as scared to see the lights go out as was the hunter in his primitive night.

If we consider the superiority of the human species, the size of its brain, its powers of thinking, language and organization, we can say this: were there the slightest possibility that another rival or superior species might appear, on earth or elsewhere, man would use every means at his disposal to destroy it.

Everywhere one seeks to produce meaning, to make the world signify, to render it visible. We are not, however, in danger of lacking meaning; quite the contrary, we are gorged with meaning and it is killing us.

We are becoming like cats, slyly parasitic, enjoying an indifferent domesticity. Nice and snug in the social, our historic passions have withdrawn into the glow of an artificial coziness, and our half-closed eyes now seek little other than the peaceful parade of television pictures.

It is not entrails that we try to interpret these days, nor even hearts or facial expressions; it is, quite simply, the brain. We want to expose to view its billions of connections and watch it operating like a video game...All that fascinates us is the spectacle of the brain and its workings. What we are wanting here is to see our thoughs unfolding before us – and this itself is a superstition.

- Jean Baudrillard

The hour is late

2009-03-25T03:52:00.000-07:00

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

Meditation, the practice of internal alchemy?

Science, the pursuit of Truth and rejection of Dogma?

In Vino Veritas?

2009-01-11T05:04:00.000-08:00

Or How I Stopped Drinking, And Didn't Become Enlightened.

“I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day.”

Frank Sinatra

Some years ago I started a little experiment. Each year I gave up something, and one year I gave up drinking alcohol. This was somewhat inspired by, but now because of, the 5th Precept "I undertake to observe the precept to abstain from intoxicating drinks and drugs causing heedlessness." Another reason for giving up alcohol was that at this time I was going through some 'personal issues' and it seemed prudent to remove drinking and drugs from the equation.

My little experiment was intended to reveal what I AM. How would giving up these things change me? What would this reveal about the essence of Me-ness?

“Drunkenness is temporary suicide: the happiness that it brings is merely negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiness”

Bertrand Russell

What did I discover? I'm not totally sure to be honest. It seems to me that most, and maybe all, of what I consider to be the Me-ness of Me is in actuality habits born of repetition. I thought that by stripping away the layers I might find the essential Me, my Soul if you will. This turned out not to be the case.

And this brings one in peril of nihilism.

The Buddhist notion of emptiness is often misunderstood as nihilism. Unfortunately, 19th century Western philosophy has contributed much to this misconstruction. Meanwhile Western scholars have acquired enough knowledge about Buddhism to realise that this view is far from accurate. The only thing that nihilism and the teaching of emptiness can be said to have in common is a sceptical outset. While nihilism concludes that reality is unknowable, that nothing exists, that nothing meaningful can be communicated about the world, the Buddhist notion of emptiness arrives at just the opposite, namely that ultimate reality is knowable, that there is a clear-cut ontological basis for phenomena, and that we can communicate and derive useful knowledge from it about the world. Emptiness (sunyata) must not be confused with nothingness. Emptiness is not non-existence and it is not non-reality.

How does one get a handle upon such concepts as the 'gate-less gate', 'form is emptiness' and 'emptiness is form'? They seem to be totally at odds with our experience of reality.

Robert Anton Wilson wrote about this experience, which he called Chapel Perilous.

"Chapel Perilous is a stage in the magickal quest in which your maps turn out to be totally inadequate for the territory and you're completely lost. And at that point you get an ally who helps you find your way back to something you can understand. And then after that for the rest of your life you've got this question: Was that ally a supernatural helper, or was it just part of my own mind trying to save me from going totally bonkers with this stuff? And the people I know who've had that kind of experience, very few of them have come to an absolutely certain conclusion about this."

So how does this relate to drinking and not drinking? Well I can assure you all that I stopped drinking and did not become enlightened. I had my first drink for what is probably four years last night and I didn't find ultimate Truth, so it appears that there is not necessarily truth in wine.

“Well, people got attached. Once you cut the umbilical cord they attached to the other things. Sight, sound, sex, money, mirages, mothers, masturbation, murder, and Monday morning hangovers.”

Charles Bukowski

So where is my "ally who helps you find your way back to something you can understand"? Buddha? The Shroom Entities? Bacchus/Dionysus? Richard Dawkins?

Maybe Bukowski was on to something. Drinking and Not Drinking are attachments. And as long as there is attachment there is no way of finding the exit of Chapel Perilous. The Ally may come in many forms.

Should I take the advice of Charles Baudelaire?

“It is the hour to be drunken! to escape being the martyred slaves of time, be ceaselessly drunk. On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish.”

----------------
Now playing: Sigur Rós - Ágćtis Byrjun
via FoxyTunes

Generation A

2009-01-05T11:14:00.000-08:00

http://www.poee.co.uk/site/content/view/140/

We can build something totally new. We can rebel against ourselves.
I don’t know what form it will take, but it won’t entail hiking barefoot to India or psychotherapy, I think we can do it without celebrity yoga videos or pop-concerts. Maybe we should lock all the famous people away on a desert Island, but maybe we should also consider not telephoning in to let them out again.
Let’s leave the ruins behind, switch off the Blue Screen of Death and restart the computer.
Let’s be Generation A.

And then we’ll have a cup of tea.

The Hollow Men

2008-12-23T04:10:00.000-08:00

The Hollow Men
T. S. Eliot

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

A penny for the Old Guy

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

'Non Profit' Profits Everyone

2008-10-08T23:49:00.000-07:00

The Dalai Lama has donated tens of thousands of pounds to charity after unexpectedly making a huge profit from his recent visit to Nottingham.

The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader had planned his trip in May as a non-profit event, but five talks he gave at the Nottingham Arena were sell-outs.

Children's charities and services in Nottingham have been given £12,000.

A further £50,000 was donated to other more global causes, including China's earthquake-affected Sichuan province.

Other causes to profit from the unexpected windfall are victims of the Burma cyclone and a children's project in Tibet.

Buddhism, Not Buddhism

2008-10-06T11:58:00.000-07:00

There has been an interesting debate in the comments section of Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen blog regarding the Big Heart Circle (a $50,000 five day Zen retreat).

I don't know enough about Big Mind or Genpo Roshi/Dennis Merzel to pass judgement, but it does raise an interesting question as to what is and was is not valid Buddhist practices.

If teachers with transmission from legitimate Buddhist lineages can stir up controversy how is a lay person to see the wood for the trees? My local group is run by the Western Buddhist Order and they seem like nice people, but the FWBO is certainly controversial. My reason for keeping at arms length has more to do with my innate distrust of groups rather than a specific doubt about the members of the local FWBO.

I am currently reading The Essential Shinran. It is not at all clear to me how one gets from the original teachings of Gautama to a form of Buddhist practice based purely on faith and recitation of the Nembutsu, and yet this is the most popular form of Buddhism in modern Japan. Is Pure Land a legitimate form of Buddhism?

If the so-called Crazy Cloud Zen masters of the past, who were controversial figures, are now looked upon as Enlightened Teachers it is difficult to dismiss out of the hand the present crop of left field Buddhists. Some of them may well be hucksters or cult leaders, but others may be looked on by future generations in much the same way that we view Ikkyu and Bankei.

My advice? Caveat Emptor.

----------------
Now playing: Badly Drawn Boy - Promises
via FoxyTunes

RAW on Buddhism

2008-09-03T00:43:00.000-07:00

The Universe contains a MAYBE

2008-08-27T11:39:00.000-07:00

Brad Warner (some-time Punker, some-time Zen Monk, full-time Imperfect Human Being) just wrote something very freakin' profound on his blog;

It's also absolutely un-Buddhist to point at another person and say that person is breaking the precepts. You cannot know what the precepts are to someone else. Trying to insist that others live up to your interpretation of the precepts is a recipe for misery anyway. They never will. I guess it's a good way to make yourself feel morally superior for a few seconds. But that never really lasts. Might as well give up the game.

Let us assume for a moment that the Buddha was attempting to teach a (note that I do not say THE) path to awakening, rather than trying to set up a religion of which he would be the Uber Monk. This places the Precepts as a part of the path (or method, practice, or whatever you like to call it).

I experience the Precepts as a method of awakening to the reality of my conditioning. Can you see the conditioning of the monk in the following famous Zen story?

Tanzan and Ekido were once travelling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling.

Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection.

"Come on, girl," said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.

Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself. "We monks don't do near females," he told Tanzan, "especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?"

"I left the girl there," said Tanzan. "Are you still carrying her?"

----------------
Now playing: Seventeen Evergreen - Sazerac
via FoxyTunes

Caveat Emptor

2008-08-23T00:41:00.000-07:00

Buying in to someones BS (belief system) can be a risky thing to do. There are a lot of 'buddhist' groups and teachers out there selling one form of BS or another, and it can be confusing to sort through all the different claims and counter-claims.

When is a 'buddhist' teacher NOT a 'buddhist' teacher? Is dharma transmission from teacher to pupil the ONLY route to becoming a legitimate teacher of the dharma? Who did Gotama get his transmission from?

Robert Anton Wilson may have said "An Enlightened Master is ideal only if your goal is to become a Benighted Slave."

Forgiveness

2008-07-21T07:14:00.000-07:00

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

- Gandhi

To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.

- Lewis B Smedes

Sincere forgiveness isn't colored with expectations that the other person apologize or change. Don't worry whether or not they finally understand you. Love them and release them. Life feeds back truth to people in its own way and time.

- Sara Paddison

Susokkan or Breath Counting Meditation

2008-07-13T02:19:00.000-07:00

The practice of susokkan (breath-counting) is recommended for people meditating on their own. In susokkan a person counts the exhalations from one to ten, then goes back to one and begins again. If the count is lost, return to one. Be fully conscious of each and every breath, and be sure to maintain awareness as exhalation changes to inhalation and inhalation changes to exhalation.

No Governor

2008-07-12T04:29:00.000-07:00

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped. We are all absolutely free. If everybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled -- by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even. All existing society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses. Ten people who know [this] would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists.

Hugh Crane a.k.a. Cagliostro the Great, in Schrödinger's Cat trilogy (The Trick Top Hat)

Zen in unlikely places

2008-07-10T13:22:00.000-07:00

He deals the cards as a meditation
And those he plays never suspect
He doesnt play for the money he wins
He doesnt play for the respect
He deals the cards to find the answer
The sacred geometry of chance
The hidden law of probable outcome
The numbers lead a dance

Sting - Shape Of My Heart

Dharma Punk'd

2008-06-26T11:09:00.000-07:00

(Excerpt from an interview with Noah Levine) "Over the years I’ve come to see the intention or foundation of both punk rock and Buddhism as so similar, as being this energy of dissatisfaction. The Buddha was dissatisfied with the ordinary suffering of life and wanted to find freedom from that suffering. I think that the punk movement is founded on that same dissatisfaction—that all of this oppression and inequality and political corruption sucks!

So the first part of my life was focused on rebelling outwardly. As I’ve gotten involved in spiritual principles it feels very much like this inner rebellion—that outward dissatisfaction is a core dissatisfaction that’s in me—is turning that energy inward, to purifying the greed and hatred and delusion within myself, and doing what I can to alleviate it in the world and help others...".

Exterior Life

2008-06-25T12:06:00.000-07:00

So long as we do not die to ourselves,
and so long as we identify with someone or something,
we shall never be free.
The spiritual way is not for those wrapped up in exterior life.

- Farid ud Din Attar

Now

2008-06-22T11:51:00.000-07:00

Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore, each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each, is to succeed.

Being 'in the now' is a bit if a Zen cliche. That does not stop it being good advice for living your life.

Sage Advice

2008-06-19T11:35:00.000-07:00

Remember To Breath

Immediatism

2008-05-31T02:22:00.000-07:00

Self and Other complement and complete one another. There is no Absolute Category, no Ego, no Society--but only a chaotically complex web of relation--and the "Strange Attractor", attraction itself, which evokes resonances and patterns in the flow of becoming.

Arbeit macht frei?

2008-05-25T00:55:00.000-07:00

I stumbled upon this interesting article on the BBC News website about life, work and meaning.

It strikes me that we are in the middle of an epidemic of meaninglessness at work. Bankers, lawyers, and senior managers are increasingly asking themselves what on earth their jobs mean, and finding it hard to come up with an answer. As the agony aunt on the Financial Times I get asked all the time by successful professionals - what is it all about?

Verse 342 of the Dhammapada has this teaching about Craving;

Who follow craving are assailed,
they tremble as the hare ensnared,
held fast by fetter and by bonds
so long they come to dukkha again.

The Austrian psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl wouldn't have been in the least surprised by this. In 1946 he wrote Man's Search for Meaning in which he argued that that our deepest hankerings are not - as Freud thought - of a sexual nature, but are a lust for purpose in life. Frankl spent five years in Nazi prison camps and during that time he worked out that there are three paths to meaning - work, love and suffering.

Maybe the best way of dealing with pointlessness at work is not to worry too much about it. An acquaintance in advertising tells me how one day he and his colleagues were agonizing over a tiny nuance in a script for a radio commercial. Suddenly he had a jolt of realisation: this was utterly pointless. Since then he has made his peace with the meaninglessness of what he does, and enjoys the job rather more as a result.

This might sound a bit too nihilistic for some people. However, it does illustrate nicely for me the practice of avoiding the creation of our own little drama. Verse 199 of the Dhammapada teaches;

We the unfrenzied live
happily midst the frenzied,
among the frenzied humans
from frenzy dwell we free.

Bankei

2008-05-22T23:33:00.000-07:00

Bankei Yōtaku (盤珪永琢, Bankei Yōtaku 1622-1693) was a well-known Rinzai Zen Buddhist master, and the abbot of the Ryomon-ji and Nyoho-ji. Bankei is most well known for his talks on the Unborn as he called it. Bankei's brilliance and directness reminds one of the style and approach of the ancient masters of the Ch'an tradition during the T'ang Dynasty.

I first read about Bankei in Crazy Clouds: Zen Radicals, Rebels and Reformers by Perle Besserman and Manfred Steger. His teaching style and philosophy really clicked and I have been a fan ever since.

"Song of Original Mind"

Unborn and imperishable
Is the original mind
Earth, water, fire and wind
A temporary lodging for the night

Attached to this
Ephemeral burning house
You yourselves light the fire, kindle the flames
In which you’re consumed

Keep your mind as it was
When you came into the world
And instantly this very self
Is a living "thus-come" one

Ideas of
What’s good , what’s bad
All due to
This self of yours

In winter, a bonfire
Spells delight
But when summertime arrives
What a nuisance it becomes!

And the breezes
You loved in summer
Even before the autumn’s gone
Already have become a bother

Throwing your whole life away
Sacrificed to the thirst for gold
But when you saw your life was through
All your money was no use

Clinging, craving and the like
I don’t have them on my mind
That’s why nowadays I can say
The whole world is truly mine!

Since, after all this floating world
Is unreal
Instead of holding onto things in
Your mind, go and sing!

Only original mind exists
In the past and in the future too
Instead of holding onto things in
Your mind, let them go!

Having created
the demon mind yourself
When it torments you mercilessly
You’re to blame and no one else

When you do wrong
our mind’s the demon
There’s no hell
To be found outside

Abominating hell
Longing for heaven
You make yourself suffer
In a joyful world

You think that good
Means hating what is bad
What’s bad is
The hating mind itself

Fame, wealth, eating and
drinking, sleep and sensual delight --
Once you’ve leaned the Five Desires
They become
Your guide in life

Notions of what one should do
Never existed from the start
Fighting about what’s right, what’s wrong
That’s the doing of the "I"

When your study
Of Buddhism is through
You find
You haven’t anything new

If you think the mind
That attains enlightenment
Is "mine"
Your thoughts will wrestle, one with the other

These days I’m not bothering about
Getting enlightenment all the time
And the result is
I wake up in the morning feeling fine!

Praying for salvation in the world to come
Praying for your own selfish ends
Is only piling on more and more
Self-centeredness and arrogance

Die -- then live
Day and night within the world
Once you’ve done this, then you can
Hold the world right in your hand!

If you search for the Pure Land
Bent upon your own reward
You’ll only find yourself
despised
By the Buddha after all!

People have no enemies
None at all right from the start
You create them all yourself
Fighting over right and wrong

Clear are the workings of cause
and effect
You become deluded, but
don’t know
It’s something that you’ve done yourself
That’s what’s called self- centeredness

Though the years may creep ahead
Mind itself can never age
This mind that’s
Always just the same

Wonderful! Marvelous!
When you’ve searched
and found at last
The one who never will grow old
-- "I alone!"

The Pure Land
Where one communes at peace
Is here and now, it’s not remote
Millions and millions of leagues away

When someone tosses you a tea bowl
-- Catch it!
Catch it nimbly with soft cotton
With the cotton of your skillful mind!

This poem may have been written as a series of shorter poems which have been collected together as one complete work after his death. I think one could study, explore and meditate upon this poem for a lifetime and develop a deep understanding of Zen and 'Original Mind'.

Cause and Effect

2008-05-18T00:45:00.000-07:00

Another Nasrudin “joke” underlies this essential circularity of reality, and generally invisible interactions which occur:

One day Nasrudin was walking along a deserted road. Night was falling as he spied a troop of horsemen coming toward him. His imagination began to work, and he feared that they might rob him, or impress him into the army. So strong did this fear become that he leaped over a wall and found himself in a graveyard. The other travelers, innocent of any such motive as had been assumed by Nasrudin, became curious and pursued him.

When they came upon him lying motionless, one said, “Can we help you — why are you here in this position?”

Nasrudin, realizing his mistake, said, “It is more complicated than you assume. You see, I am here because of you; and you, you are here because of me.”

Cup Of Brown Joy

2008-05-04T02:46:00.001-07:00

Herbal?
No thanks!

Tea's bitter taste can refer to buddhist suffering; the clean and clear tea liquid can refer to the monastery rule of self-discipline, and calm. In Chinese history, many famous buddhist temples had planted and nurtured tea trees with great types and quality.

A parable of tea master

Sen-no-Rikyu built a garden enclosed by a tall hedge that blocked the view of the sea. The client was unhappy - until he bent to wash his hands in the water basin. The sea then became visible in a gap between the hedges and the client smiled. As the tea master had hoped, the client realized the intent behind the design. His mind made the connection between the water in the basin and the great ocean and thus between himself and infinite universe.

Second Chance - Liam Finn

2008-05-03T10:58:00.000-07:00

You stand around your haunted home
those demons won't leave you alone
don't forget me when you grow old

Which puts me in mind of this teaching of the Buddha;

Verse 305. Discipline Yourself In Solitude

Alone one sits, alone one lies,
alone one walks unweariedly,
in solitude one tames oneself
so in the woods will one delight.

Antique Gate

2008-05-03T09:55:00.001-07:00

Antique Gate
Originally uploaded by Mockney Rebel [Videographer]

“You have no right to erect your toll-gate upon the highways of thought”

Robert Green Ingersoll

More words of wisdom;

Happiness is not a reward / it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment / it is a result.

Tolerance is giving to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.

Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. In the examination of a great and important question, everyone should be serene, slow-pulsed and calm.

Two sides of a river

2008-05-03T03:26:00.000-07:00

Nasreddin sat on a river bank when someone shouted to him from the opposite side;

"Hey! how do I get to the other side?"

"You are on the other side!" Nasreddin shouted back.

Seven Simple Rules

2008-04-27T12:07:00.000-07:00

...for life in hiding.

One, never trust a cop in a raincoat.

Two, beware of enthusiasm and of love, both are temporary and quick to sway.

Three, if asked if you care about the world's problems, look deep into the eyes of he who asks, he will never ask you again.

Four, never give your real name.

Five, if ever asked to look at yourself, dont.

Six, never do anything the person standing in front of you cannot understand.

And finlly seven, never create anything, it will be misinterpreted, it will chain you and follow you for the rest of your life.

Dan Les Sac vs Scroobius Pip

2008-04-27T04:04:00.000-07:00

Every now and then I cower and I need to find empowerment
Empowerment is paramount to how I can begin to mount
A plan that I can implement
to make a dent on ignorance
Instead of drunk belligerence
and the dissidence of miscreants
Especially in this instance
with the never ending persistence
to use the words in each sentence
as if they were blunt instruments
to beat a hole in the defence
of this beauty and her innocence
which serves to just build resistance
in spite of all my good intents.

Which links nicely to Verse 218 of the Dhammapda...

One with a wish for the Undeclared,
with mind so well-pervaded,
a mind not bound in pleasures of sense,
an ‘upstream-goer’s’ called.

Crimethink

2008-04-21T11:38:00.000-07:00

I have no particularly strong affinity with Tibetan Buddhism, and I don't own any books by the Dalai Lama, but I do support the right of the Tibetan people to self determination.

News such as this reminds me of the novel 1984;

China has launched an "education" campaign in Tibet it says is designed to undermine support for the Dalai Lama and any separatist sentiment.

The Tibet Daily newspaper said the campaign was to "unify the thinking... of officials and the masses".

'Education campaign'...'unify the thinking'...one can only wonder how the country that produced the subtle teachings of Daoism and Chan Buddhism has fallen into the grip of Sinosoc (as Orwell may have dubbed it).

The Bodhisattva Vow can be found in various forms. I am going to suggest the following as a 19th Century flowering of the Bodhisattva mindstream;

"I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free. The freedom of other men, far from negating or limiting my freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and confirmation."
Mikhail A. Bakunin

However doubleplusgood our zazen practice is, the zafu remains a temporary respite in an ocean of suffering.

Koan

2008-04-15T00:37:00.002-07:00

What kind of world is it where the reality is weirder than the satire?

Robert Anton Wilson, Schrodinger's Cat

Admiration & Insults

2008-04-11T23:59:00.000-07:00

''I do not want your admiration now, because I do not want your insults in the future. I bear with my loneliness now in order to avoid greater loneliness in the years ahead. You see, loneliness is the price we have to pay for being born in this modern age, so full of freedom, independence, and our own egotistical selves''.

Kokoro by Natsume Soseki

Dr Siddhartha... (Part 2)

2008-04-11T00:21:00.000-07:00

...or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Precepts

A look at the second precept;

I undertake to observe the precept to abstain from taking things not freely given.

On the face of it this is a simple precept to practice. Surely 'abstain from taking things not freely given' = Not Stealing.

Yes, but I think there is more to it than that.

What does 'freely given' mean? In our multi media world we have access to music and video via P2P, but how many of us stop and think about who is sharing this, who really owns this, and just because it is Free does that also mean it is Freely Given?

Zen Master Thich Nhat Hahn has expanded the second precept;

Aware of the suffering caused by exploitation, social injustice, stealing and oppression, I vow to cultivate loving kindness and learn ways to work for the well-being of people, animals, plants and minerals. I vow to practice generosity by sharing my time, energy, and material resources with those in real need. I am determined not to steal and not to possess anything that should belong to others. I will respect the property of others, but I will prevent others from profiting from human suffering or the suffering of other species on earth.

This is a much broader brush approach to the second precept. Here we have clearly gone beyond the realm of things. Surely this is a logical step in the practice of awareness.

Bamboo

2008-04-07T00:06:00.001-07:00

Bamboo
Originally uploaded by Mockney Rebel

Oh, how many times
I have asked how thick
the snow is!

Snow in April is very unusual here. By the afternoon is was gone, just a few patches left in shady places.

Buddha Machine

2008-04-05T10:23:00.001-07:00

Buddha Machine Top
Originally uploaded by The Joy Of The Mundane

The Buddha Machine is a modified version of a device used in Buddhist temples throughout Asia, which feature repeating loops of chanting monks or nuns. This particular incarnation is the brainchild of the musical duo FM3. It contains nine preset loops which which play individually and run continuously.

The creators have kindly made all 9 loops available (in .Wav format) for free download on their website. Using these files I have created a virtual Buddha Machine by dropping the files into iTunes, converting them to AAC, creating an album and playing it back with Gapless and Shuffle ON.

TAZ & TAZ

2008-04-02T10:43:00.000-07:00

The Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ) describes the socio-political tactic of creating temporary spaces that elude formal structures of control. The essay uses various historical and philosophical examples, all of which attempt to lead the reader to the conclusion that the best way to create a non-hierarchical system of social relationships is to concentrate on the present and on releasing one's own mind from the controlling mechanisms that have been imposed on it.

In the formation of a TAZ, Bey argues that information becomes a key tool that sneaks into the cracks of formal procedures. A new territory of the moment is created that is on the boundary line of established regions. Any attempt at permanence that goes beyond the moment deteriorates to a structured system that inevitably stifles individual creativity. It is this chance at creativity that is real empowerment.

Shikantaza (single-minded sitting) practice help us 'concentrate on the present'.There is nothing else but the present moment as we sit, aware of all phenomena that arise and pass in the present moment (well, that is the theory anyway).

Samvega

2008-04-01T13:39:00.000-07:00

samvega (sa"mvega): The oppressive sense of shock, dismay, and alienation that comes with realizing the futility and meaninglessness of life as it's normally lived; a chastening sense of one's own complacency and foolishness in having let oneself live so blindly; and an anxious sense of urgency in trying to find a way out of the meaningless cycle.

Change Your Mind

2008-04-01T11:27:00.000-07:00

As part of the recent 'Alternative Therapies' series on the BBC, presenter Kathy Sykes (a regular meditator already) investigated the health claims of various meditation practices.

Sara Lazar of Harvard Medical School was visited by Kathy Sykes during the making of Alternative Therapies. Her researches have shown that the cortex - the outer layer of the brain - gets thicker the more meditating that you do. The intriguing possibility arises that the physical structure of the brain can be altered intentionally, rather in the way bodies of Olympic athletes are developed through specific training regimes.

Dr Siddhartha... (Part 1)

2008-03-31T10:03:00.000-07:00

...or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Precepts

The precepts are a condensed form of Buddhist ethical practice. They are often compared with the ten commandments of Christianity, however, the precepts are different in two respects: First, they are to be taken as recommendations, not commandments. This means the individual is encouraged to use his/her own intelligence to apply these rules in the best possible way. Second, it is the spirit of the precepts -not the text- that counts, hence, the guidelines for ethical conduct must be seen in the larger context of the Eightfold Path.

I undertake to observe the precept to abstain from ...

...harming living beings.
...taking things not freely given.
...sexual misconduct.
...false speech.
...intoxicating drinks and drugs causing heedlessness.

Part 1 - Doing less harm

The 'classic' five precepts for lay buddhists can be found in various forms on the internet. The wording is normally very close to that which I have quoted above. The Unified Buddhist Church (a Zen order founded by Thich Nhat Hanh) has reinterpreted the five precepts for a modern western audience;

The Five Mindfulness Trainings were developed during the time of the Buddha to be the foundation of practice for the entire practice community, including monastic and lay members. The basis for the trainings is mindfulness.

The Five Mindfulness Trainings protect our freedom and make life beautiful. As guidelines for our daily lives they are the basis of happiness for individuals, couples, families and society.

The first precept is expanded upon to become, Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I vow to cultivate compassion and learn ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to condone any act of killing in the world, in my thinking and in my way of life.

Is it possible to do no harm?
I chose to become a vegetarian a while ago. Whilst this seems to be a way of doing no harm, look closer and it is possible to see that many insects have died in the various processes that have delivered the food to my plate. Also there is the destruction of habitat, carbon footprint of transport etc. It seems my choice to become a vegetarian is not actually doing no harm.

Even the most extremely ascetic lifestyle is going to do harm to something. Is this a reason to ignore the first precept? Ignore the harm that our actions bring about? I do not think that is the answer. Being aware of the harm we do is the first step in reducing that harm. I may not be able to eliminate all the harm, but I can certainly do the things that it is in my power to do to reduce this harm.