"If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him !" Was the Buddhists'  nod to resist human social arborealisation. No one to tell me things. Need we have anyone tell us what is good ,Phaedrus ?

Can a mind know nothing ? It cannot, as it can only know nothing as lack of something. It cannot, inasmuch as it can set out to avoid thinking  of pink elephants while mixing a spell.  If you were to get on with stuff, the absence of pink elephants would manifest in the mind, and yet, would show up as the answer to anyone asking " what shouldn't you think of ?", confirming that , indeed, pink elephants have taken residence in the mind, though current whereabouts be unknown, they can manifest at the right trigger.

In the same way , at almost no time, is the mind empty. An empty mind is structurally impossible, except in the case of .......

   ***

Be spontaneous !! they said....

Tell me what that looks like !! I said  ...

   ***

The combination of dealing only with the hard truths coupled with the idea that all truths are just reflected lights from flaws mirrors ....    Either sets free or makes me complacent ...

Did Hofstadter unwittingly (or otherwise) write the architecture of transcendence ? The strange loop is but a line of flight and escape, only upwards,  while the rhizome moves in any direction... 

Laughter is a line of escape, seek it, but beware of those who continue to enjoy the same jokes ,for they are prisoners of their territory, and will take you nowhere

We like Advaita because Zen says it is similar and it trains the crosshairs on avidya as the root flaw from which delusional existence springs forth  we now know samkhya to be dvaita and the siva-sakti of Kashmiri tantric shaivism to be another form of Advaita. How maya is considered is the difference between these two .We know samkhya and zen and buddhism to be atheistic. 

Any guesses which book  I am reading at the moment ?

 austerity lowers the leptin and ghrelin levels of mind. thus a cleansing effect is produced.

among other things, 

did you know there is a sequel to the wind in the willows, around four books, written by a man named William Horwood ...

there's also a cartoon movie of the first book, on youtube (full & free I think)

i suppose thinking in tools has set back personal development a million years, because what is needed is the combined term for that which does and has something done to. by separating the action and reaction we have simply severed the feedback loop and  we have created accounting both mental and economical eventually social, that is, for lack of a better word, blind, unfeeling, or at a high enough view - schizophrenic. of course , these things are easily visible in this electronic, third-wave age of instant news and prosumer reporting. we no longer look to the news as much as to our reels, of gossip, of myths and ballads and drama couched as fitness videos or singing clips. 

 before you deconstruct the constructor, things are things

while you deconstruct the constructor, things aren't things

after you've deconstructed the constructor and the deconstructed material is no longer part of the regular dataflow of things, things are things again

therefore you have achieved nothing

 i suppose to write you need to open, and channel your center, into the work and words

but the 'center' is just an edge, a congealing of years of pretensions and performances, that holds no substance, until manifested into existence by the environment that caused it

thus, writing with the  authentic voice unloads a load of empty words which keep flying around like dust in the wind

it struck me while reading payuto's dependent origination -   buddhist literature refers to avidya as cause of birth and death,  but they mean birth and death of the 'I' inside the brain at the abstract level, ie , something akin to when entity recognition happens in the brain. ie, for a dog, things happen, response happens , but to a human, things happen 'to me!' and 'I respond'.

Gemini acknowledges my genius - 

"That is a profound and highly accurate insight that aligns perfectly with how modern cognitive science and secular Buddhist philosophy intersect. You have essentially bridged the gap between ancient phenomenology and modern neuroscience." 

I wonder how tall my statue will be ....

 always tell your jokes to couples

at least one of them is bound to laugh

it's a given thet every couple has opposing senses of humour

if that fails, make fun of one, the other is your fan 

sometimes, I dream about being Huckleberry Finn and rafting down all the time, visiting wooded hills, and towns, and sleeping or dancing under the stars whenever I want 

 High density societies engender a higher  default level of goo(tm)*

This goes hand in hand with high co-ordination  high co-operative  activities. And rice. 

Wheat comes from the steppes and the deciduous. Their culture is more loosely bound, individualistic, allowing lot of free movement in wilderness,  hence fending on their own a lot. Still there is a lot more win-win thinking than compared to desert cultures ,where territorial harshness leads to win-idontcare strategies thriving blooming.

The Japanese are, by default, considerate of the impact of their actions on others.the Others live rent free in their head. In my family they call it dakshinyam or obligation, it's the culture of never saying no to anyone asking them anything. The one who asks shamelessly, wins. With the centre not holding , with the elders not available to generate a code of conduct as rapidly as the demographics and the techno-economics changes, the herd-cells are at a loss, 

rationalisation means to rationalise. by virtue of asking why , one arrives at the conclusion that we rationalise only because something isn't. How do we know we're rationalising ? one highly fallible way is if something cleanly makes sense when said to someone else. too pat.

when all of a group internalise a story which has 2 components

1. others, and their attributes of not-good-enough-ness  

2. the internal hierarchy, of function and reward,  to maintain

then we have an organism that is a gang +. Gangs are the smallest unit of society, not individuals. Friends, colleagues, companies, religious groups, govt departments, hobby clubs, all are gangs. Gangs enforce their boundaries, negotiate with each other, 

The cheapest internal hierarchy to maintain, given man's propensity for violence, is the pirate-loot-distribution scheme. Just compare the richest to the poorest in any group, and you'll get the distribution scheme. Listen to their stories, and you'll get an idea of their moralisations and rationalisations which keep the status quo. Simplistically, a gang is a set of outward facing prickles, with the goo's inside. some prickles are pointed inwards, to handle the internal hierarchy and distribution.

onwards ho to the fascinating tarpit that is the world of prickles & goo of different types. currently we're thinking in the physical world when we say prickles & goo. to move past the physical world, and do meaningful math on these, we need to enter the hallowed halls of phase space, Markov convergence, Lyapunov stability, or chaos theory. # Leaving that dance aside for now, we can conclude that a human being in composed of prickles and goos of different variety, existing in harmony, coming out to play at relevant times and places. The suppression of the non-dominant, non-playing ones is done by various societally sanctioned methods - alcohol, religion, sports, content, bitching, love-hotels, gambling ... 

the individual nature of each prickle/goo element in their space is not so 

* Alan watts prickles & goo theory

+ https://web.archive.org/web/20180224133710/http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com:80/2007/11/lisp-programmers-and-anarchists.html

if anything, this post is a watery rehash of Giles Bowkett's masterpiece ^

# DeLanda has probably done this. Deleuze did it without mathematics. McLuhan explored the impact of technology and 

 All teachers are like dumbells

Not totally easy. The more you lift the more you grow

Good teachers adjust their weight to you and keep increasing sneakily overnight so every morning your record is just below the target

Some dumbells have too narrow or or rusted holds that cut your hand