Wow, you really got into a lot there. I do think there has been a lot of twisting of eastern philosophy by the New Age crowd and from my very limited study of Buddhism as interpreted by Thich Nhat Hahn our being exists only in relation to everyone and everything else, the nature of interbeing. Have you ever read anything by Spinoza, I have a little in the past couple of years and his vision is very broad, does not deny the ego but sees us as part of nature and that preserving and expanding our being is virtuous as long as we do not hurt others. A vast simplification of a brilliant philosopher but maybe you would like him.
The feminist/ liberal/ conservative debates all seem a bit staged and like they are just talking in circles to get people rilled up. Any of these folks that push any, and I mean any divide and conquer narrative are part of the problem in my humble opinion. We need empathetic peace makers, people who create and love beauty and truth. Love and peace to you. ☀️🧘🌸
yes, i did go into a lot. when writing it i was flopping around not sure how or where it would go. i found myself confused about why these ostensibly unrelated directions were calling to me. and i also found it touching something in me i couldn't exactly see because i found myself tired in odd ways and seemingly unnecessarily. and that i found my old samskara (habit) to pick my nose came back with a lot of force.
i appreciate that you read through this very strange essay. and long. my writing muse has been very very insistent on not making them short! i've argued with my muse about that, and my muse continues to be adamant. (lol! muse or 'ego'! who knows? one man's muse is that man's deluded ego could be in play. hmmmm.)
i have found hahn to be right on point, in my opinion with my very limited understanding of the 'depths' of buddhism. he and michael stone are the only two buddhists whose books i have in my library.
i've not come into spinoza — yet. with your prompt i will go seek him out in my local library. (well, once i have enough money to pay for the membership, that is. now *that* has been an interesting curve-ball in life! an important part of my aparigraha process of letting go the toxic ideology i had implanted into me by family and culture.) thank you for your suggestion and brief introduction. i will go look for him on-line. my problem with that is that i seem allergic to reading 'books' on my computer! i have at least 16 books to read in my 'books' app and about 8 or so pdf books to read, including my brother-in-law's (jasun horsley's) important books. hmmmm.
yes, the debates are staged for sure. with my having recently started actually looking at these theatrics — beyond a few jordan peterson talks/interviews in 2016, i didn't watch anything about or of or by them, despite my sister warning me back then that woke was a growing energy that was going to be 'really bad'. as i've written in my early travelogues, i did not watch news or social information at all. zero.
what watching the theatrics has suggested to me is that basically everything is staged. even the 'devolution' of the alt/mfm movement into a similar 'voice' of fear porn, intolerance, anger, and singularities strikes me as theatre. and so, in an interesting way, does 'feminism/woke/trad-con' etc have significance beyond our experiential reality that 'everything' and i mean everything we thought was true, has been staged? and that includes, imo, most of what passes for 'religion' and even yogic practice by the majority. dogen's observation of the corruption of 13th century buddhism could be his similarly recognising the theatre of his day. and that suggest that we can legitimately ask the question 'did he know he was creating his own theatre?!'
lol! it just struck me that my muse is wanting me to be 'exposed' to the world as theatre more actively and broadly. to really put my nose in it and smell its rancid acrid morbidity. to hone my nose and eyes to those theatrics. we are living in theatre, and so it might be, for me it seems, important for me to not be oblivious to its tropes, themes, and deceptions. [headshake.] 'all the world's a stage and we, mere players, with our entrances and our exits.' hmmmm.
did you listen through or read the ten ox herding pictures? i've read through them a few times before. this time, the video link for #8 that i included had an expanded commentary that at times had the hairs standing up on my body. and had me laughing in a way that i couldn't have done before.
"Any of these folks that push any, and I mean any divide and conquer narrative are part of the problem in my humble opinion. We need empathetic peace makers, people who create and love beauty and truth."
yes. exactly. that divide is to obfuscate dependent co-arising, or interdependence. as gautama sighed, so many years ago, once that is truly understood, that is when suffering will be reduced to the minimum. (my paraphrase.) evil is not going to be fixed by naked women possessed by their animus screaming their anger at disembodied ideas of men or patriarchy. nor will it be fixed by sharp tongued debaters who can quote scriptures and data and cut people to pieces faster than we can say rumplestiltskin. i have truly settled to the point of equanimity with all.
there is a great story told by michael stone about thich nhat hahn. during the time of the vietnamese boat people hahn received hundreds of letters. one of them was someone (the family?) who survived and in the letter described how a 12 year old girl had been raped in front of her family by a thai pirate. she subsequently jumped into the ocean and drowned. hahn was upset and meditated on this. when done, he commented that with such events it is easy to take the girl's side and to want the pirate brought to justice. then he said that if he had been born into the life of the pirate, would he have been that pirate? so he began to put effort to build schools in thailand to change the circumstances that allowed for the dependent co-arising of the thai pirate who raped girl. hmmmmm. powerful stuff!
here is the michael stone podcast: Lotus Sutra, Part 14: Life is like a funeral [stupa symbol]
Wow, you really got into a lot there. I do think there has been a lot of twisting of eastern philosophy by the New Age crowd and from my very limited study of Buddhism as interpreted by Thich Nhat Hahn our being exists only in relation to everyone and everything else, the nature of interbeing. Have you ever read anything by Spinoza, I have a little in the past couple of years and his vision is very broad, does not deny the ego but sees us as part of nature and that preserving and expanding our being is virtuous as long as we do not hurt others. A vast simplification of a brilliant philosopher but maybe you would like him.
The feminist/ liberal/ conservative debates all seem a bit staged and like they are just talking in circles to get people rilled up. Any of these folks that push any, and I mean any divide and conquer narrative are part of the problem in my humble opinion. We need empathetic peace makers, people who create and love beauty and truth. Love and peace to you. ☀️🧘🌸
hola, shield maiden.
yes, i did go into a lot. when writing it i was flopping around not sure how or where it would go. i found myself confused about why these ostensibly unrelated directions were calling to me. and i also found it touching something in me i couldn't exactly see because i found myself tired in odd ways and seemingly unnecessarily. and that i found my old samskara (habit) to pick my nose came back with a lot of force.
i appreciate that you read through this very strange essay. and long. my writing muse has been very very insistent on not making them short! i've argued with my muse about that, and my muse continues to be adamant. (lol! muse or 'ego'! who knows? one man's muse is that man's deluded ego could be in play. hmmmm.)
i have found hahn to be right on point, in my opinion with my very limited understanding of the 'depths' of buddhism. he and michael stone are the only two buddhists whose books i have in my library.
i've not come into spinoza — yet. with your prompt i will go seek him out in my local library. (well, once i have enough money to pay for the membership, that is. now *that* has been an interesting curve-ball in life! an important part of my aparigraha process of letting go the toxic ideology i had implanted into me by family and culture.) thank you for your suggestion and brief introduction. i will go look for him on-line. my problem with that is that i seem allergic to reading 'books' on my computer! i have at least 16 books to read in my 'books' app and about 8 or so pdf books to read, including my brother-in-law's (jasun horsley's) important books. hmmmm.
yes, the debates are staged for sure. with my having recently started actually looking at these theatrics — beyond a few jordan peterson talks/interviews in 2016, i didn't watch anything about or of or by them, despite my sister warning me back then that woke was a growing energy that was going to be 'really bad'. as i've written in my early travelogues, i did not watch news or social information at all. zero.
what watching the theatrics has suggested to me is that basically everything is staged. even the 'devolution' of the alt/mfm movement into a similar 'voice' of fear porn, intolerance, anger, and singularities strikes me as theatre. and so, in an interesting way, does 'feminism/woke/trad-con' etc have significance beyond our experiential reality that 'everything' and i mean everything we thought was true, has been staged? and that includes, imo, most of what passes for 'religion' and even yogic practice by the majority. dogen's observation of the corruption of 13th century buddhism could be his similarly recognising the theatre of his day. and that suggest that we can legitimately ask the question 'did he know he was creating his own theatre?!'
lol! it just struck me that my muse is wanting me to be 'exposed' to the world as theatre more actively and broadly. to really put my nose in it and smell its rancid acrid morbidity. to hone my nose and eyes to those theatrics. we are living in theatre, and so it might be, for me it seems, important for me to not be oblivious to its tropes, themes, and deceptions. [headshake.] 'all the world's a stage and we, mere players, with our entrances and our exits.' hmmmm.
did you listen through or read the ten ox herding pictures? i've read through them a few times before. this time, the video link for #8 that i included had an expanded commentary that at times had the hairs standing up on my body. and had me laughing in a way that i couldn't have done before.
"Any of these folks that push any, and I mean any divide and conquer narrative are part of the problem in my humble opinion. We need empathetic peace makers, people who create and love beauty and truth."
yes. exactly. that divide is to obfuscate dependent co-arising, or interdependence. as gautama sighed, so many years ago, once that is truly understood, that is when suffering will be reduced to the minimum. (my paraphrase.) evil is not going to be fixed by naked women possessed by their animus screaming their anger at disembodied ideas of men or patriarchy. nor will it be fixed by sharp tongued debaters who can quote scriptures and data and cut people to pieces faster than we can say rumplestiltskin. i have truly settled to the point of equanimity with all.
there is a great story told by michael stone about thich nhat hahn. during the time of the vietnamese boat people hahn received hundreds of letters. one of them was someone (the family?) who survived and in the letter described how a 12 year old girl had been raped in front of her family by a thai pirate. she subsequently jumped into the ocean and drowned. hahn was upset and meditated on this. when done, he commented that with such events it is easy to take the girl's side and to want the pirate brought to justice. then he said that if he had been born into the life of the pirate, would he have been that pirate? so he began to put effort to build schools in thailand to change the circumstances that allowed for the dependent co-arising of the thai pirate who raped girl. hmmmmm. powerful stuff!
here is the michael stone podcast: Lotus Sutra, Part 14: Life is like a funeral [stupa symbol]
https://podcasts.apple.com/mx/podcast/awake-in-the-world-podcast/id923427517?i=1000650263570
or soundcloud.
https://soundcloud.com/michaelstoneteaching/lotus-sutra-part-14-life-is-like-a-funeral
the hahn letter is at about 25:40.
all the best with what is changing. everything changes! with peace, respect, love and exuberant joy. 🙏❤️🧘♂️❤️🙏
I will look at what you recommended tomorrow and reply more, thanks for the suggestions. 🪷