As I've said below I first heard the world ends Feb 1, 2019 a while ago in 2002 before most of the really bad shit happened. Yea bad shit happens, all the time, somewhere, to someone. As I thought of making Feb 1st a personal holiday to contemplate living in the now versus checking in on hgow we're doing with those long range plans, and to make pies. I guess thats sorta what new years day is for some (or get drunk again with everybody night). More pointedly can I live my life actually expecting the end of the world in slightly less than eleven years. First it lets me off the guilt hook of knowing my "estate" and retirement savings are non existant. Secondly I feel like I'm capable of surviving for ten years it's getting to be past 75 that looks scary as hell. Knowing I'll die at the age of 64 allows me to begin to understand the reality of my death. The inevitability of death and taxes is todays koan.
Gotta go do my tax form, (only have 10 more to do).
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Sunday, April 6, 2008
the zen-est sci fi i know
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
122007: Hey just found this viridian design site moderated by Bruce Sterling (the author of…
(“Holy Fire”, “Globelhead”, “The Hacker Crackdown:
Law And Disorder on the Electronic Frontier”, “Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years” (I want that book &) “A Good Old-Fashioned Future”.
His blog -or google him for a mind-blowing list of sites.
Ok a sci-fi futurist hacker cyberpunk environmentalist design manifesto writer blog! If he’s a Zen Master I’m moving to Austin to live in the gutter in front of his home.
122007: Hey just found this viridian design site moderated by Bruce Sterling (the author of…
(“Holy Fire”, “Globelhead”, “The Hacker Crackdown:
Law And Disorder on the Electronic Frontier”, “Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years” (I want that book &) “A Good Old-Fashioned Future”.
His blog -or google him for a mind-blowing list of sites.
Ok a sci-fi futurist hacker cyberpunk environmentalist design manifesto writer blog! If he’s a Zen Master I’m moving to Austin to live in the gutter in front of his home.
the zen rant that really got me going.
020708: Today’s Zen Rant; (hows that for oxymoronism)
I got invited to a discussion group on the book - "A New Earth; awakening your lifes purpose" by Eckart Tolle (As Seen on Oprah).
{{{ You are invited to join a free discussion study group centered around the new book by New York Times Bestseller, Eckart Tolle, author of "The Power of Now". Seen on Oprah, February 6, 2008 with Goddess of Self-help Louise Hay.}}}
The guy who invited me is deep into networking with the crystal and “alternative” crowd to further his career as a financial counselor. Slick eh, exploit gullible people with enough money to have lots of time to pursue esoteric phenomena. It sounds downright Elizabethan to me. So I look at this authors site - http://www.eckharttolle.com/ and it appears he has made a career of repackaging Zen, (without mentioning budda or zen), as if he can show you the way to happiness through “awakening” Good god, lol, this guy is a younger version of Dr Wayne Dryer, (who took Zen and added some sort of scientology positive thinking meditation). Do they believe that they discovered this themselves or do they rationalize that the re-packaging is necessary to avoid the wrath of the fundies, (or maybe something like the babelization of the “Truth”)? Think of the authors and those hangers-on who revolve around them and the whole “self-help” – self psychology industry who deal with what in Zen is fundamentally the practice of seeing into ones own nature, achieved by simply sitting.
Self making the self out of the self, self doing itself by itself - Sawaki Roshi
Skip this if you’re tired of zen ….
In “Opening the hand of Thought” Kosho Uchiyama writes:
When we let go of our conceptions, there is no other possible reality than what is right now. This undeniable reality is the reality of life fundamentally connected to everything in the universe. Right now is all-important. Dwelling here and now, in this reality, letting go of all the accidental1 things that arise in our minds, is what I mean by opening the hand of thought.
Kosho says accidental to mean the random – could have been anything – stuff, such as I’ve been reading zen but I could have been studying the civil war or reading all the political stuff on the primaries or listening to talk radio, etc. All these will suggest random thoughts and they may lead to other random thoughts.
Chon Tri in “Zazen Practice A guideline for Beginners” (Very good intro, available free here - http://www.zenguide.com/practice/zazen.cfm Says; “ Dhyana”(Zen) is a practice for settling the mind, which is usually wandering around at all times and leads us into confusion state.”
In "The Cocoon of Pain" from Nothing Special: Living Zen, Charlotte Joko Beck writes: We have many ways to cope with life, many ways to worship comfort and pleasantness. All are based on the same thing: the fear of encountering any kind of unpleasantness.
· If we must have absolute order and control, it's because we're trying to avoid any unpleasantness. If we can have things our way, and get angry if they're not, then we think we can survive and shut out our anxiety about death.
· If we can please everyone, then we imagine no unpleasantness will enter our life.
· We hope that if we can be the star of the show, shining and wonderful and efficient, we can have such an admiring audience that we won't have to feel anything.
· If we can withdraw from the world and just entertain ourselves with our own dreams and fantasies and emotional upheavals, we think we can escape unpleasantness.
· If we can figure everything out, if we can be so smart that we can fit everything into some sort of a plan or order, a complete intellectual understanding, then perhaps we won't be threatened.
· If we can submit to an authority, have it tell us what to do, then we can give someone else the responsibility for our lives and we don't have to carry it anymore. We don't have to feel the anxiety of making a decision.
· If we pursue life madly, going after any pleasant sensation, any excitement, any entertainment, perhaps we won't have to feel any pain.
· If we can tell others what to do, keep them well under control, under our foot, maybe they can't hurt us.
· If we can "bliss out," if we can be a mindless "buddha" just relaxing in the sun, we don't have to assume any responsibility for the world's unpleasantness. We can just be happy.
As Joko Beck reminds us, in these many ways we worship "the god of no discomfort and no unpleasantness." We get lost in our "feverish efforts" and lose touch with life - the life that presents itself to us every moment. In the end these coping strategies can't work, because they are not based on reality, they are based on a perception of life that we create. When this happens -- when our attempts to control life fail us -- we are finally ready, she writes, "to begin serious practice."
“You are your only master
Who else?
Subdue yourself,
And discover your master”
From the Dhammapada:
Said of the Bodhidharma, (founder of Zen) -
The fire of emptiness blazes out his beard
I got invited to a discussion group on the book - "A New Earth; awakening your lifes purpose" by Eckart Tolle (As Seen on Oprah).
{{{ You are invited to join a free discussion study group centered around the new book by New York Times Bestseller, Eckart Tolle, author of "The Power of Now". Seen on Oprah, February 6, 2008 with Goddess of Self-help Louise Hay.}}}
The guy who invited me is deep into networking with the crystal and “alternative” crowd to further his career as a financial counselor. Slick eh, exploit gullible people with enough money to have lots of time to pursue esoteric phenomena. It sounds downright Elizabethan to me. So I look at this authors site - http://www.eckharttolle.com/ and it appears he has made a career of repackaging Zen, (without mentioning budda or zen), as if he can show you the way to happiness through “awakening” Good god, lol, this guy is a younger version of Dr Wayne Dryer, (who took Zen and added some sort of scientology positive thinking meditation). Do they believe that they discovered this themselves or do they rationalize that the re-packaging is necessary to avoid the wrath of the fundies, (or maybe something like the babelization of the “Truth”)? Think of the authors and those hangers-on who revolve around them and the whole “self-help” – self psychology industry who deal with what in Zen is fundamentally the practice of seeing into ones own nature, achieved by simply sitting.
Self making the self out of the self, self doing itself by itself - Sawaki Roshi
Skip this if you’re tired of zen ….
In “Opening the hand of Thought” Kosho Uchiyama writes:
When we let go of our conceptions, there is no other possible reality than what is right now. This undeniable reality is the reality of life fundamentally connected to everything in the universe. Right now is all-important. Dwelling here and now, in this reality, letting go of all the accidental1 things that arise in our minds, is what I mean by opening the hand of thought.
Kosho says accidental to mean the random – could have been anything – stuff, such as I’ve been reading zen but I could have been studying the civil war or reading all the political stuff on the primaries or listening to talk radio, etc. All these will suggest random thoughts and they may lead to other random thoughts.
Chon Tri in “Zazen Practice A guideline for Beginners” (Very good intro, available free here - http://www.zenguide.com/practice/zazen.cfm Says; “ Dhyana”(Zen) is a practice for settling the mind, which is usually wandering around at all times and leads us into confusion state.”
In "The Cocoon of Pain" from Nothing Special: Living Zen, Charlotte Joko Beck writes: We have many ways to cope with life, many ways to worship comfort and pleasantness. All are based on the same thing: the fear of encountering any kind of unpleasantness.
· If we must have absolute order and control, it's because we're trying to avoid any unpleasantness. If we can have things our way, and get angry if they're not, then we think we can survive and shut out our anxiety about death.
· If we can please everyone, then we imagine no unpleasantness will enter our life.
· We hope that if we can be the star of the show, shining and wonderful and efficient, we can have such an admiring audience that we won't have to feel anything.
· If we can withdraw from the world and just entertain ourselves with our own dreams and fantasies and emotional upheavals, we think we can escape unpleasantness.
· If we can figure everything out, if we can be so smart that we can fit everything into some sort of a plan or order, a complete intellectual understanding, then perhaps we won't be threatened.
· If we can submit to an authority, have it tell us what to do, then we can give someone else the responsibility for our lives and we don't have to carry it anymore. We don't have to feel the anxiety of making a decision.
· If we pursue life madly, going after any pleasant sensation, any excitement, any entertainment, perhaps we won't have to feel any pain.
· If we can tell others what to do, keep them well under control, under our foot, maybe they can't hurt us.
· If we can "bliss out," if we can be a mindless "buddha" just relaxing in the sun, we don't have to assume any responsibility for the world's unpleasantness. We can just be happy.
As Joko Beck reminds us, in these many ways we worship "the god of no discomfort and no unpleasantness." We get lost in our "feverish efforts" and lose touch with life - the life that presents itself to us every moment. In the end these coping strategies can't work, because they are not based on reality, they are based on a perception of life that we create. When this happens -- when our attempts to control life fail us -- we are finally ready, she writes, "to begin serious practice."
“You are your only master
Who else?
Subdue yourself,
And discover your master”
From the Dhammapada:
Said of the Bodhidharma, (founder of Zen) -
The fire of emptiness blazes out his beard
how do we deal with the future past and prescient
Below the line is a non- post from 6 years ago when things were beginning to not look particularly good for me personally. I was wondering what I'd do if I knew there was limited tomorrow. This was before shutting down the firm, being diagnosed with cancer or seriously practicing Zen.
Now I realize no-one gets out alive and the future is a dead/not-dead cat-in-a-box. Most of us hardly ever live in the now, we're always thinking, thinking, thinkung. We think about how the past has mede us who we are and brought us here and thats why the future will be one way or another and how we want it to be different but it probably won't be because of all that past shit. Meranwhile it is just a glorious spring day outside and I am typing on a blog.
The Mahayana school says I can't just follow the path to nirvana, I gotta take you too. Thats why I blog.
________________________________
Gonzo blog of dCole aka cosmic muffin
07/25/2002 today I learned the world ends Feb 1 2019
You and I now have slightly less than seventeen years to put things in order. Discovery.com reported today that the first positively rated chance of a large asteroid striking earth and wiping out lifeasweknowit, (or lawki as its known in sci-fi ), may occur on Feb. 1 2019. They just discovered it and more analysis may bring down the odds, but today the chances are better than average that it will hit earth and destroy whatever continent is ground zero. In other words we know that sometime an asteroid will hit earth, it happens every million years or so. The odds of it happening next October 30th are some number “x” and the odds of it happening Feb. 1 2019 is much better than “x”.
Even if the odds are reduced by further analysis, think about what would happen if the projection becomes a forecast. Aside from the expected end of the world proselytizing from the fundies, and expected get right with god sermons from every church, synagogue, mosque and Stonehenge, what would the worlds governments do? What would you do?
After realizing that the retirement plans do not need to go beyond 2019, and that your children will likely not survive and live a full life what exactly do we do?
Would you chuck the plans for the future and live for today? Will the economy and civil society devolve slowly, quickly, or evolve into something not based on growing the future? What would that look like?
Would I work harder to build my career or chuck the job declare bankruptcy and head for the south sea beaches or what?
Its something I want to think about, so I’ve finally started my blog. Perhaps I’ll keep it up till 2019 perhaps not. There’s just so much to consider here. If the world ends in seventeen years all my seventh generation environmentalism is just so much recyclables in the landfill. In the movie Life as a House Kevin Kline finds out he’s dying and reconciles with his estranged wife and son and finally builds his dream house. Or at least he tries, his new found friends and family finish it and it’s given to someone he harmed long ago. But what if there will be no happy residents of the dream house. Will I finish my own 30-year project to turn the family’s farmstead into an estate fit for the next 150 years of gracious living? If 2020 never comes what is the point of striving for the post oil, steady state, and earth friendly civilization when we can use up the oil, despoil the planet, and add to global warming without fear of the consequences. I’ve always had a problem with my cultures short-term emphasis. I abhor capitalism's emphasis on the next quarter and damn the decade, let alone the seventh generation, orientation. I haven’t been trendy nor liked the fashion pop culture infatuation with the new since I was 15. I especially disliked the building industries increasing impermanence, where the cheapest lightest most return immediacy won out over solid architecture meant to last a century or more.
Now I realize no-one gets out alive and the future is a dead/not-dead cat-in-a-box. Most of us hardly ever live in the now, we're always thinking, thinking, thinkung. We think about how the past has mede us who we are and brought us here and thats why the future will be one way or another and how we want it to be different but it probably won't be because of all that past shit. Meranwhile it is just a glorious spring day outside and I am typing on a blog.
The Mahayana school says I can't just follow the path to nirvana, I gotta take you too. Thats why I blog.
________________________________
Gonzo blog of dCole aka cosmic muffin
07/25/2002 today I learned the world ends Feb 1 2019
You and I now have slightly less than seventeen years to put things in order. Discovery.com reported today that the first positively rated chance of a large asteroid striking earth and wiping out lifeasweknowit, (or lawki as its known in sci-fi ), may occur on Feb. 1 2019. They just discovered it and more analysis may bring down the odds, but today the chances are better than average that it will hit earth and destroy whatever continent is ground zero. In other words we know that sometime an asteroid will hit earth, it happens every million years or so. The odds of it happening next October 30th are some number “x” and the odds of it happening Feb. 1 2019 is much better than “x”.
Even if the odds are reduced by further analysis, think about what would happen if the projection becomes a forecast. Aside from the expected end of the world proselytizing from the fundies, and expected get right with god sermons from every church, synagogue, mosque and Stonehenge, what would the worlds governments do? What would you do?
After realizing that the retirement plans do not need to go beyond 2019, and that your children will likely not survive and live a full life what exactly do we do?
Would you chuck the plans for the future and live for today? Will the economy and civil society devolve slowly, quickly, or evolve into something not based on growing the future? What would that look like?
Would I work harder to build my career or chuck the job declare bankruptcy and head for the south sea beaches or what?
Its something I want to think about, so I’ve finally started my blog. Perhaps I’ll keep it up till 2019 perhaps not. There’s just so much to consider here. If the world ends in seventeen years all my seventh generation environmentalism is just so much recyclables in the landfill. In the movie Life as a House Kevin Kline finds out he’s dying and reconciles with his estranged wife and son and finally builds his dream house. Or at least he tries, his new found friends and family finish it and it’s given to someone he harmed long ago. But what if there will be no happy residents of the dream house. Will I finish my own 30-year project to turn the family’s farmstead into an estate fit for the next 150 years of gracious living? If 2020 never comes what is the point of striving for the post oil, steady state, and earth friendly civilization when we can use up the oil, despoil the planet, and add to global warming without fear of the consequences. I’ve always had a problem with my cultures short-term emphasis. I abhor capitalism's emphasis on the next quarter and damn the decade, let alone the seventh generation, orientation. I haven’t been trendy nor liked the fashion pop culture infatuation with the new since I was 15. I especially disliked the building industries increasing impermanence, where the cheapest lightest most return immediacy won out over solid architecture meant to last a century or more.
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