adulting is realising that the book on distraction, is a distraction, and ditto for the book on focus and concentration and memory, and any of the myriad forms of self-improvement - whether it be the latest from the 'psychology of money' author, or books on learning negotiation, or even that machine learning or algorithms or sanskrit or yoga book you bought to read....
about GEB we are still undecided. maybe we'll get to it after reading a book on decisiveness. i think chip and dan heath did one.
"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. If you have a hero, look again, you have demeaned yourself in some way[1]. Need we have anyone tell us what is good ,Phaedrus [2]?
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.... [3]
Tell me what that looks like !! I said ...
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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... [4]
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[5]
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, different from Shankaracharya's [6]. How maya is considered is the difference between these two .We know samkhya and zen and buddhism to be atheistic.
Somebody wrote a book about spiritual materialism. He was supposedly enlightened, he also drove and crashed sports cars, slept around with his disciples, and was frequently inebriated. In his book he explained why this was perfectly harmonious with his spirituality [7]. I'm reminded of the Dilbert's random number generator, which I reproduce here for the reader's benefit .
Any guesses which book I am reading at the moment ?
[1] no
[2] no
[3] no
[4] no
[5] no
[6] no
[7] no
austerity lowers the leptin and ghrelin levels of mind. thus a cleansing effect is produced.
among other things, Thomas Merton, and Taoism talk about fasting of the heart
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 ....
