Training: Take 2

[Guest]

Laughing buddha says?

(Spelling Nazi says...?) *sigh*

[sKePTiKal]

OK, maybe my title as the Queen of Cryptic is a little shaky!  LOL...
say what, Guest? Come again? Can you elaborate?

Thx.

[Guest]

Amber 

laughing buddha smiles on our confusions and predicaments. How rediculous we must seem.

Even in the worst of times, with my heart beating twice the normal rate and all my senses telling me that danger is afoot:

I'm still here. It hasn't happened yet!

What's the worst that could happen? - works, sometimes, for me.

When all my frustration (with myself and/or others) starts to build, I can find a way out.

All things get dealt with in the end. What we do in the meantime is....what laughing buddha laughs at.

I find that helps me.

[teartracks]

Guest - if Buddha is still laughing (stone cold dead), it can't be all that bad, eh?

tt

PS  PR, I'm not laughing at what you're having to deal with.  I'm just 'laughing' at the deceased laughing Buddha!

[sKePTiKal]

Thanks Guest! and tt - go on and laugh...

I can tell the difference between "laughing buddha" and someone making fun of me (well, I think I can...!) And yes, I think I can relish the idea of buddha laughing his fat belly off at me, flailing around like I am. I don't take myself THAT seriously...

... but I do forget sometimes, that while I'm in the midst of trials & tribulations & agony... that I got here from a beginning point of the "story" and that the end of the story is waaaaaaaayyyyyy out there yet and can only be reached by taking the next step, reading the next word, continuing on. Too often I LET MYSELF feel like a soul condemned to an eternity in purgatory, which is not reality, now is it? Maybe that purgatory is sticky tar-like fear of doing something wrong... going "too far" (wherever that is)... being "too extreme" in my decisions. That's one of those things I've always been told about myself - thanks mombro - that just haven't been validated in reality.

[Guest: this morning I'm hearing loud & clear what you've said about changing one's mind and what's the worst that could happen... and I'm also remembering the great remark about not worrying about self-esteem when a lion's going to eat you... and I think you're my new zen master.... I "get" the answer to the koan...

and I can tell myself: RUN FOOL... knowing full well that my personal "history" doesn't have to repeat itself; that the current FOO-Follies will end differently and I don't really control that; that it's not my turn to suffer a repeat of what happened back then. OH - and I've already done purgatory; over it. And for that matter - Twigs can change her mind, too - about how she copes with FOO-follies and reminders of that kind of stuff. Duh. She's allowed, you know???

I've reached the point lately, where if I'm not "doing", there's no where else to be, except laughing (or sleeping) - altho the oddest things make me laugh right now. It's like having a split personality.... there's all the heavy, important stuff on the one hand that requires careful serious thought - and I still feel like some little kid making smart-ass remarks and silly faces in class - just to relieve the tension.

Like: I mentioned the importance of food and rest - self-care - to one of my Ds who is working long hours 7 days a week & playing softball the other day... how crabby we get if we don't take care of ourselves... and she came back with a text saying that yeah, this morning she ate the neighbor's dog!

oooo-kkkkkkk..... hahahahaha!

[Guest]

Nooooooooo Amber, you just killed me, again!

(TT did you do it to the buddha? Where did you meet him?)

Is everything allowed? Wow. Just for us, wouldn't that be 'wow'? I'm going to act 'as if' on that basis....it won't be easy.

Amber I'm fiddling with the word FOOL and trying to play with the FOO inside.

(I love those smart-ass kids!)

[sKePTiKal]

Fiddle away - I didn't catch that!

"Is everything allowed?"   I don't know the answer to that one.

Acceptance of the consequences of those kinds of choices - even the unexpected; unpredictable consequences - well, that's kinda built into thinking everything is allowed right? No matter what it is. Whether you saw it coming or not. Positive or Negative. Something that hurts someone else... is that allowed? Under what circumstances? Like fighting back in self-defense?? When one's well-being and survival are at stake, for instance?

But part of me shrinks back from the "everything allowed" idea. It seems to be an easy slippery slide right into N-egoism... where other people and their feelings don't matter at all. Maybe it's the old B&W fundamentalist Christian training, too - where there exists absolute right and wrong in all things... and which doesn't hold up in my observations of life, but part of me won't completely "let go" of that page in my mental encyclopedia of accumulated information as being at least, plausible. Even against the mass of evidence I have that accumulated that all ethics and morality is dependent on situational circumstances and details and criteria and personalities; no matter what people profess. Present moment morality, I guess it is.

And part of me also feels that "everything allowed" is tempting fate; daring the devil; spitting in the face of the universe... and that the karmic wheel will come back around and paybacks, truly will be hell....

and even after saying all that - I still don't know the answer to the question.

[Guest]

Agreed Amber. I did mean just for 'us', just as an idea, just for a few moments of hedonism...but my mind too says...not really. It's not good for a brain after all. Power corrupts etc.

So....how about....
many many things are 'allowed'?

And we haven't even mentioned the idea of what 'allowed' means. Aloud.

hmm. "In my foo-lishness, I was never aloud."

[teartracks]

TT did you do it to the buddha? Where did you meet him?

I'm afraid to answer that, Guest!  Do what?  

Haven't met him.  He's a little old for even me and dead to boot!  I think I'm missing (not Buddha) something!

tt

[Guest]

Amber, a tangent.

I started The Glass Bead Game. Hard work (page 37).

The frustration of feeling (and being) ignorant. Classical music? I have no idea. I feel I should have a little idea. But I have none. I don't know what's being talked about. Different worlds.

A bit like the word 'literature'. What is 'literature'? Even worse, what is serious literature? Is it very serious?!

These are things that create barriers that don't exist. Words like 'literature' create a world for those who know and those who don't can....read magazines (although some who read popular novels by 'serious' writers think they are reading 'literature' and I wonder who is the bigger fool). Does it matter? Well, yes. You can't build a spacestation on muddled maths and you can't think critically on....oh....you choose. The Secret! Or er..the chap..Tolle. Well you can, but it doesn't help if you can't be critical. (Who says?)

But, nevertheless, interesting idea of his that when he was writing the book, he was being critical of common 'culture' and writing of new dawn of the mind - what would he have thought if he'd lived much longer? If he'd seen common culture today?

It bugs me when I feel ignorant, because some knowledge is expected of a reader. But then I'm ignorant of so much, thankfully. References to classical music aren't the only things that stop me in my tracks. Any history before about 1914 and outside Europe is outside my learning. Well, human comings and goings that is (which is very little history really). What does a mountain make of our history?

And I keep thinking to myself, what did Alice Miller say (what's the real story here?). And do I have the inclination (the language is .....difficult).

PS. karma doesn't exist. Now watch it come and bite my ass.



PPS.



TT


KILL HIM, of course! (on tha path)

[teartracks]

Oh...

I shot the sherriff (it was self defense),  but I didn't shoot no Buddha!

tt

[Guest]

Aww.

[teartracks]

The frustration of feeling (and being) ignorant. Classical music? I have no idea. I feel I should have a little idea. But I have none. I don't know what's being talked about. Different worlds.

A bit like the word 'literature'. What is 'literature'? Even worse, what is serious literature? Is it very serious?!

These are things that create barriers that don't exist. Words like 'literature' create a world for those who know and those who don't can....read magazines (although some who read popular novels by 'serious' writers think they are reading 'literature' and I wonder who is the bigger fool). Does it matter? Well, yes. You can't build a spacestation on muddled maths and you can't think critically on....oh....you choose. The Secret! Or er..the chap..Tolle. Well you can, but it doesn't help if you can't be critical.  (Who says?)

But, nevertheless, interesting idea of his that when he was writing the book, he was being critical of common 'culture' and writing of new dawn of the mind - what would he have thought if he'd lived much longer? If he'd seen common culture today?

It bugs me when I feel ignorant, because some knowledge is expected of a reader. But then I'm ignorant of so much, thankfully. References to classical music aren't the only things that stop me in my tracks. Any history before about 1914 and outside Europe is outside my learning. Well, human comings and goings that is (which is very little history really). What does a mountain make of our history?

And I keep thinking to myself, what did Alice Miller say (what's the real story here?). And do I have the inclination (the language is .....difficult).

PS. karma doesn't exist. Now watch it come and bite my ass.

Guest,

I think the secret to reading, and listening and enjoying the ideas of others is that going in, one benefits from having the confidence that their own opinion, perspective, etc., has value.  When I was young, I viewed everything written in books to be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  I remember so well the first time I came across something an author (I don't remember who) said that was so rediculous I said out loud, "That's not true."   I don't think I have a jaundiced eye as a result.  What came of it was that from then on, the things written in books was filtered through my perspective too.  They are only expressing their opinion.  Well I have one too!  One of the nice things about reading what others say is that often when you combine what they say with what you think it can be a moment to embrace or discard from either or both perspectives.  There you go.  I put in my two cents.

Oh and BTW, factor in that authors like to fluff and puff just like the rest of us  !

tt

[Guest]

Thanks TT.

The thing is..... ....when I intend to do something, I want to do it properly and to my satisfaction. My standards for myself are still reasonably high (unfortunately). I have started a few books and stopped a little way in...and I don't like doing that (maybe I should've persevered? How can 2 million avid readers be so wrong...? ). *sigh*

I don't know what 'counterpoint' is. I couldn't tell Bach from ... well, I don't know. And so I think: "whoah! I need to educate myself before I read any more of this book because I'm going to miss so much that it's not worth me reading without that education because I just won't undertstand it and that would be such a waste!".

Is it possible that Hesse was trying to impress with his book, trying to gain approval from some unseen higher authorities, to get the recognition he wanted? Or am I projecting?  Presumably that's why authors do use fancy concepts and convoluted language? Because they feel it's too common or inferior to speak plainly and simply. Or perhaps because their heads are arranged in a such way that to speak simply and plainly is very very difficult for them.

If I don't need a double maths/music degree to read this book, I'll do it. But I have an uneasy feeling about it and even with a book, that sometimes means something.

[teartracks]

Hi Guest,

Well, I wouldn't worry too much about the properly part.  What if you just happen to be reading the 'improper' works of a  preening or half informed author (I don't have a particular author in mind, btw), then what? 

Classical music is my absolute favorite.  I listen to it a lot.  BUT most of the time, I can't name the composer.  I don't know if it is an opus, or a funeral march.  Sometimes I can't even identify certain instruments.  I might enjoy knowing all those things, but I don't.  I like the way it sounds.  That's sufficient. 

Hesse - Of his, I only read Siddhartha.  For the life of me, I can't think of a single thing I took from it that would qualify as a good tool for life.  But that's me.  We're all different, eh?

tt