It slips in and out (was Re: Answer for Norway Spiral)
Tang Huyen
Lee Rudolph wrote:
> Kirsten:
>
> >"Kitty P":
>
> >> I do believe it would depend on what
> >> medication we might have forgotten to
> >> take on a given day. :)
>
> >Or possibly the medication we remembered
> >to take.
>
> There's a fine collection of once-popular music
> called "Read'Em and Weep: The Songs you
> forgot to Remember".
>
> I think "the drugs you forgot to remember" has
> a nice ring, too.
>
> Lee Rudolph (they're right there on the tip of
> my tongue!)
And then there are things that people just forget
to forget, like the Christianity that Fu and
DharmaTroll carry in their head. They really
would like to forget it, because it bothers them
so much, but they keep forgetting to forget it,
so in effect remember it as something to lose
but keep losing just that loss. It is right on the
edge of their forgetting, but they are so
enamoured to it that they pull it right back,
from the brink of oblivion.
George Cherry has reproduced the following
from a post of Rob Epstein:
<<"So that's why Marpa cried when his son
died! He was beyond his silly students after all.
They criticized him for weeping and grieving
when his son died. 'Haven't you always taught
us that the separate manifest person is an
illusion?'
He said: 'Yes, but he was such a beautiful
illusion I can't help but weep'. He accepted
the multiple dual reality of existence.
Enlightenment and Illusion are part of the
same Mind, so partake of each other.
Detachment and Humanity are not separate
either. It's just a paradox.
His students were still attached to duality,
and so they could not accept it.">>
To Fu and DharmaTroll, Christianity is an
illusion, but such a beautiful illusion that they
can't help but keep, and keep fresh in their
mind, the better to fight as illusion. It just slips
in and out. If it is in, they fight it to push it out,
but if it is out, they hanker after it and pull it
right back in. Damned if it is there and
damned if it isn't there. Its presence and
absence partake of each other and are not
separate. Fight and flight are not contrary,
but help each other, the way one hand washes
the other. It's just a paradox.
Tang Huyen
Charles E Hardwidge
news:VfidnZFgmam7bb_W...@supernews.com...
It's not a paradox and you're talking bullshit again. Honestly, the pair of
you are like dealing with Labour ideologues and Tory tribalism. Somewhere
between the arguing and posturing can someone post something useful and
stop being antisocial wankers.
By useful, I mean, has anyone got off their fucking ass and done something
physical with an end result you can kick? Not theory. Not advocacy. GETTING
OFF YOUR FUCKING ASS. Let's hear ONE example where you bunch turned
lecturing and posturing into REALITY.
And, yeah. I'm trimming the absfg troll group. It has no place here.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
liaM
I've seen Tang Huyen change over time. He used to rant about
sock-puppets. Now there was something you could kick...
> Not theory. Not advocacy. GETTING
> OFF YOUR FUCKING ASS. Let's hear ONE example where you bunch turned
> lecturing and posturing into REALITY.
Back then, Tony Blair was PM. A goth friend said : you can't trust him,
he lies all the time. Now we find out, Tony Blair was gung ho on the
war in Irak because of his christianity. That's a sock-puppet for sure,
just like christian zen DT and Fu are for Tang. What do you think,
is the end result something you can kick ? Kick Tony and Cherie Blair
for their duplicity. Was Tang Huyen right all these years, to set up
puppets to kick as a means to promote enlightenment ? Is Labor going
to win, now that we know Blair was a warmonger crusader against Islam ?
>
> And, yeah. I'm trimming the absfg troll group. It has no place here.
>
There are days of helplessness when the best one can do is troll, no ?
Wilson
"Tang Huyen" <tanghuyen{delete}@gmail.com[remove]> wrote in message
news:VfidnZFgmam7bb_W...@supernews.com...
>
>
You're leaking all over absfg again. Put your fucking "Depends" back on.
--
Wilson
http://puddinheadwilson.tumblr.com
DharmaTroll
wrote:
>
> And then there are things that people just forget
> to forget, like the Christianity that Fu and
> DharmaTroll carry in their head.
Forgot to take your meds tonight, Brother Tang?
For years it was "Jigme (the fake DharmaTroll)". So I brought Jigme
back with me to usenet, and you stopped labeling us together, finally,
after, what, 5 years? And now, rather than some basic sanity, you
instead adopt a NEW ridiculous mantra, equating me with yet another
poster, so that now it's "the Christianity that Fu and DharmaTroll
carry in their head." While at least you always include me with good
company, can't you chill and let go of all the labeling and
projecting, the "chunking and bagging" as you call it?
I mean, Geez: most of the list here is populated by religious
denialists who pretend that dreams are no different than waking life
(equivalent to the nutters in the real world who claim that global
warming is an 'illusion'), and then the only poster who is well-read
in philosophy and has a lot to draw upon and goes into this obsessive
closed-loop and babbles about "the Christianity that Fu and
DharmaTroll carry in their head". Over and over. I'd prefer you post
more about Kant and Frege. But, nooooo.
Fu in fact seems to me to be one of the few posters, besides Hollywood
Lee, that seems to not carry around dogma in his head and wants to
apply Buddhism to practical everyday life, instead of using it to
pretend that they're in a Harry Potter film.
Take a look at this video, Tang. Watch it all the way through.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmNb3xJFzkc
It's the Christian version of the "dreams and fantasies are the same
as real life" nonsense. This may be funny, but when denying the
physical reality of the world, or equating dreams or fantasies with
reality gets out of hand, then religious nutters chant "drill, baby,
drill" while seeing spooks in kids' toys. And then they want to screw
up my physical, ultimately real planet, dammit. Yeah, I was born into
one of the world's largest cults, and was taught to drink the blood of
the vampire every Sunday morning so that I, too, would have eternal
life, etc., and was insulted by nuns in grade-school almost as much
as I'm insulted around here. But I'm not carrying it in my head
anymore, Brother Tang. My problem with religious dogmatists these days
is that they want to pollute my planet and not let my gay friends
marry each other. They're really annoying, Brother Tang. It's rather
practical, though, not some neurosis that Fu and I are "carrying
around in our heads". I can't speak for Fu, but I'd bet he's probably
motivated by similar concerns.
Finally, Brother Tang, may I remind you of our days together in the
Shaolin monastery:
Two traveling monks, Tang and Trollpa, reached a river where they met
a young woman. Wary of the current, she asked if they could carry her
across. Tang hesitated, but Trollpa quickly picked her up onto his
shoulders, transported her across the water, and put her down on the
other bank. She thanked him and departed.
As the monks continued on their way, Tang was brooding and
preoccupied. Unable to hold his silence, he spoke out. "Brother
Trollpa, our spiritual training teaches us to avoid any mentation
about women, much less any actual physical contact with women, but you
picked that one up on your shoulders and carried her!"
"Brother Tang," Trollpa replied, "I set her down on the other side,
while you are still carrying her!"
--DharmaTroll
Keynes
DharmaTroll
> On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 22:13:36 -0800 (PST), DharmaTroll <dharmatr...@my-deja.com>
Denialist Nutter.
Appledog
I agree, in that it is rather tragic tang doesn't use his vast
knowledge of western philosophy to more effect on these here buddhist
and zen newsgroups. The constant mudslinging does get repetitive after
a while...
-
zenworm
preferenceless?
ZN :D
absolute permanent perfection overflowing without action
Kitty P
"DharmaTroll" <dharm...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:0a208d00-7bc3-4a19...@v30g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...
>Denialist Nutter
.
A shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living
that suits all cases.
- Carl Jung
Lee Rudolph
>"DharmaTroll" <dharm...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
>news:0a208d00-7bc3-4a19...@v30g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...
>On Dec 12, 1:53 am, Keynes <Key...@earthlinkspam.net> wrote:
>> On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 22:13:36 -0800 (PST), DharmaTroll
>> <dharmatr...@my-deja.com>
>> wrote:
...
>> >As the monks continued on their way, Tang was brooding and
>> >preoccupied. Unable to hold his silence, he spoke out. "Brother
>> >Trollpa, our spiritual training teaches us to avoid any mentation
>> >about women, much less any actual physical contact with women, but you
>> >picked that one up on your shoulders and carried her!"
>>
>> >"Brother Tang," Trollpa replied, "I set her down on the other side,
>> >while you are still carrying her!"
...
>> Holy warrior.
>
>>Denialist Nutter
>.
>A shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living
>that suits all cases.
> - Carl Jung
And an uppity woman will pinch everyone, in time.
- Uncle Carl's Shadow Self
Lee Rudolph
Tang Huyen
Lee Rudolph wrote:
> "Kitty P"
>
> >A shoe that fits one person pinches another;
> >there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.
> > - Carl Jung
>
> And an uppity woman will pinch everyone, in time.
> - Uncle Carl's Shadow Self
Kitty's remark is patently ironic, and I don't know
whom she directs it to, perhaps everybody who
are involved in the thread.
At any rate, there is an Op-Ed piece in the New
York Times "Paranormal Flexibility", by Charles
M. Blow.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/opinion/
12blow.html?hp
<<The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life
released a report on Wednesday that is bound to
stir conversation about the increasingly complicated
cacophony of spirituality in America � a mash-up
of traditional faiths, fantasy and mythology.>>
<<Twenty percent of Protestants and 28 percent
of Catholics said they believe in reincarnation, which
flies in the face of Christianity�s rapture scenario.
Furthermore, about the same percentages said they
believe in astrology, yoga as a spiritual practice and
the idea that there is �spiritual energy� pulsing from
things like �mountains, trees or crystals.� Uh-oh.
Someone�s God is going to be jealous.
Surprisingly, in some cases, those who identified
themselves as Christian were more likely to believe
these things than those who were unaffiliated. (It
should be noted that unaffiliated is not the same as
nonbeliever. Many are spiritual people who simply
haven�t found the right church, synagogue, mosque,
coven, Ouija board club, or whatever.)>>
<<The report is further evidence that Americans
continue to cobble together Mr. Potato Head-like
spiritual identities from a hodgepodge of
beliefs � bending dogmas to suit them instead of
bending themselves to fit a dogma. And this appears
to be leading to more spirituality, not less. Cue the
harps, and the sitars, and the tablas, and the whale
music.>>
This mix-and-match approach seems rather
laissez-faire, even promiscuous, relative to the strict
either-or approach of Fu and DharmaTroll, for whom
you can be either pro-Christianity all the way or
anti-Christianity all the way, but have no other option,
like the above cocktail ones, least of all the option of
living in independence from the Church and in
disregard to it. This last is total anathema to Fu and
DharmaTroll, both of whom spend the major part of
their time and energy fighting the Church (that they
carry in their head) even as they still harbour secret
sympathy for it, in the Stockholm Syndrome. They
are stuck with it, the Church (that they carry in their
head), and have either to fight it all the way or follow
it all the way. Fu repeatedly follows the many claims
of exclusivity of the Church, not just the monotheistic
one, in that to him, the words "God", "grace", "the
soul", "faith" may only be used in Christianity and
nowhere else.
Blow says: "Americans continue to cobble together
Mr. Potato Head-like spiritual identities from a
hodgepodge of beliefs � bending dogmas to suit them
instead of bending themselves to fit a dogma." It is this
trick, namely "bending dogmas to suit them instead of
bending themselves to fit a dogma", that Fu and
DharmaTroll have never learnt to handle. They can
engage in intellectual contortionism to fake Buddhism
and Chan/Zen in all their zaniness and contradiction,
but never manage to "bend dogmas to suit them
instead of bending themselves to fit a dogma". The
Church sternly dictated its framework to them in their
childhood, and they grovellingly accept it thereafter for
the duration of their lives, right down to the last comma,
all their apparent rebellion to the contrary. They still
love the Church, even if they consider its dogma pure
illusion, but such a beautiful illusion that they can't help
but keep, and keep fresh in their mind, the better to
fight as illusion, and therefore hang on to it as their
lifesaver (lifesaviour?). Remember the Stockholm
Syndrome?
Tang Huyen
DT
Maybe not, but Samsonite cases all suits...
> And an uppity woman will pinch everyone, in time.
> - Uncle Carl's Shadow Self
Oooh, is there a line? Me next!
DT
DharmaTroll
wrote:
>
> there is an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times
> "Paranormal Flexibility", by Charles M. Blow.
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/opinion/12blow.html
Nice article, Brother Tang.
More like the Tang-banger spends the major part of his time and energy
fighting his imaginary enemies, onto who he projects wild fantasies
and bios. Have you no other windmills to tilt at, Brother Tang?
However, the op-ed piece is rather interesting. You see, I've always
thought that Catholicism (or other flavors of Christianity) serve as a
kind of vaccine against other woo-woo. That is, statistically, church-
going papal-worshiping Catholics tend to have much lower rate of
belief in 'spiritual energy' pulsing from things like 'mountains,
trees or crystals.' I figure that we are naturally superstitious, and
that the Catholic beliefs max-out all the superstitious circuitry and
there's no room for more. You buy the traditional miraculous stories,
and then you pretty much are rational and thus skeptical toward
astrology, acupuncture, palm-reading, crystal energies, and paranormal
powers.
That's pretty much how it is with devout Catholics I know: they laugh
at palm-readers and talk about trees and cats being 'illusions', and
dreams being as real as waking life. In most ways, they are more sane
than the supernaturalists on these boards, Brother Tang, but they
allow their madness to take over for one hour on Sunday mornings, when
they exercise that circuitry, and then it's back to normal life.
What this fellow talks about sounds more like my New-Age Nutter
Neighbors here in La-La-Land. I'm going to a party this evening (I
even invited Robbie to it on Facebook). It's hosted by one of the most
superstitious woo-woo-ists I know, but he's a really nice guy, even
though he believes in everything, from spooks to paranormal powers,
and between Buddhist events, attends Shamanic rituals. Here's the
blurb from tonight's party:
"Join us for something a little magical this holiday season. Good
fun, fellowship, food, and a peek into your fortune. For fun,
mystery, and illumination, choose among our masters of oracle, which
will include readings in tarot, astrology, palm and others. Bring a
dish and prepare for the unexpected. Donations for mini-readings will
be given to a local Buddhist sangha. The readings will begin around
7:30pm and some reading slots my fill up. But come ye all for
merriment and magic, regardless. It has been foretold, a good time
will be had by all."
Should be fun. Though half the folks there actually take such shit
seriously. It's the Buddhists and New-Agers that seem to create what I
call the "birds' nest" of superstitions, bending the dogmas to weave
into their colorful nests. I actually don't have an opinion on which
is better (or worse): buying into the traditional package, as in being
a devout Catholic, or being a multi-superstitionist, and believing all
sorts of things, from reincarnation, astral planes, acupuncture
healing, 'energies' from rocks and crystals, sending healing woo-woo
to people who are sick, and tonight's tarot cards and palmistry. At
least in the traditional sense, I would think you're immune to more
crap, as the overpowering dominant meme destroys all the other
superstitious memes. Whereas you have much more flexibility with the
woo-woo bird's nest, but it isn't contained, and your nonsensical
disconnect to reality can just keep expanding. Some of the folks I'll
see tonight talk like tabloid stories, where every headline in the
tabloid is patently false. The closest we have on this list to that is
Keynes, but I know a dozen such folks that live within a ten minute
walk from my house, and several of them will be at the woo-woo party
tonight!
> (that they
> carry in their head) even as they still harbour secret
> sympathy for it, in the Stockholm Syndrome. They
> are stuck with it, the Church (that they carry in their
> head), and have either to fight it all the way or follow
> it all the way. Fu repeatedly follows the many claims
> of exclusivity of the Church, not just the monotheistic
> one, in that to him, the words "God", "grace", "the
> soul", "faith" may only be used in Christianity and
> nowhere else.
I don't see any of that in Fu: that's your fantasy, Brother Tang, and
yours alone. But I find the subject of this op-ed very interesting. In
some ways I prefer the bird's nest nutters, as they are at least more
open sexually than Christianists, who instead tend to have a denial of
nature and their sexuality. But the nesters are easily swayed by
conspiracy theories and pseudo-science and have no way to flush the
skeptical toilet, and so the shit just keeps piling up, much more than
needed to make a small, comfy nest of selected eclectic memes.
> Blow says: "Americans continue to cobble together
> Mr. Potato Head-like spiritual identities from a
> hodgepodge of beliefs — bending dogmas to suit them
> instead of bending themselves to fit a dogma." It is this
> trick, namely "bending dogmas to suit them instead of
> bending themselves to fit a dogma", that Fu and
> DharmaTroll have never learnt to handle.
If you would talk about this phenomena, and not just shift back into
your boring old projective caricature talk, Tang, I'd be interested in
what you think about this. Yeah, Mr. Potato Head is exactly what I
call the "bird's nest nutter". Is it a good thing? It seems in so many
cases to be a superficial collection of tru-isms and beliefs. Lots of
them are rather unhealthy, such as a prejudice against certified
physicians, and a distrust of doctors, combined with a blanket
acceptance of just about any form of quackery. Doctors are portrayed
as scientistic body mechanics who don't care about one's spirit and
only want to make money like stockbrokers. Personally, I've had only
good experiences with doctors, and the several of them in my extended
family all are caring folks. Whereas church-going Catholics go to a
real doctor when they are ill, and don't start ingesting a dozen
herbal supplements that haven't been tested and spend money on quacks
that perform "energy healing" and "reflexology" and "reiki" and the
like. The aversion to science seems to bring with it a vulnerability
to being duped by pseudo-science.
> They can
> engage in intellectual contortionism to fake Buddhism
> and Chan/Zen in all their zaniness and contradiction,
Now you're calling Fu and me fakes? So I have a question for you. What
is the difference between faking Buddhism and not faking Buddhism?
When I spent a semester after I graduated college at the IMS Vipassana
retreat center, and did all that boring sitting and walking and
sitting and walking for three months without speaking a word to anyone
or writing a single post on usenet, how was I faking it, and how would
my not faking it have been different? Sure, there are always a few
thoughts that arise in the middle of sittings, like "I'm not a real
Buddhist or spiritual person; I'm just a fake." But those thoughts
just arise and then pop like soap-bubbles like other thoughts. So what
is the difference between a Buddhist and a fake? Could it be only
whether Tang likes you or not or whether or not Tang feels threatened
by you? Might it be no more than that?
> the
> Church sternly dictated its framework to them in their
> childhood, and they grovellingly accept it thereafter for
> the duration of their lives, right down to the last comma,
Tang, analyzing your Aspergers' rants, I notice the recurring theme of
fatalism, that you think that folks are cast into a mold in their
childhood and are henceforth incapable of growth or transformation.
When I returned to these boards after a few years, you were utterly
convinced that I was Jigme (a more mature, intelligent, and kind
poster from our past) and dismissed totally the idea that I may have
grown and changed as I now sounded more like Jigme than like the old
DT. So how many years was it that you kept calling me Jigme and
couldn't see past your original caricature of DharmaTroll? For such a
smart elevator boy you sure have some gaping blind spots Same with
your talk about people and their alleged 'crashes'. Perhaps you're the
one who has changed the least, and is still repeating the same old
neurotic patterns, Tang. Lucky for you that you have lots of useful
knowledge and skills, that's fantastic, but, um, growth ain't one
of'em.
> Remember the Stockholm Syndrome?
>
> Tang Huyen
Yeah, Fu and I scoff at superstitious memes and either we're infected
with "Scientism" or "Stockholm Syndrome". What a hoot, Tang!
In any case, I'll appeal to your rational side today, rather than
taunt your neurotic side. You've brought up an interesting point with
the difference between the "Mr. Potato Head" bird's-nesters versus the
traditional religious types. You seem to favor the former. I'm not
sure I do. I actually find my Jewish friends to be the most healthy of
all. The ones who don't have beliefs in an afterlife or a literal
Cosmic Beastie, and really don't have many beliefs at all, but have a
strong liking of tradition and do it all up for the religious holidays
and rituals, and use that to feel grounded and connected to family,
community, and the universe at large. I like the Jewish non-believing
traditionalists better than either the Christian believers (who tend
to have sexual problems, and associated prejudices, like aversion to
gays), and the bird's-nesters, who are endlessly groping for more
beliefs and magic to cling to, and who push off and dislike their own
culture, especially anything that has to do with science, medicine, or
rationality. Indeed, the Jews who then go on to practice Buddhism,
while still keeping traditional rituals and their Judaism, seem to be
the healthiest folks I know. This is only anecdotal, and so worthless
except as a starting point to explore, but the several examples of
such folks like this who I know are the healthiest of all: they are
flexible, and the non-dogmatic parts of Buddhism integrate well with
their non-belief-oriented Judaism; and they are skeptical and don't
deny the reality of the world or credulously accept babble of energies
or paranormal woo-woo.
So what do you mentate about this, Brother Tang?
--DharmaTroll
"If anybody ever raises questions or objections about our religion
that you cannot answer, that person is almost certainly Satan. In
fact, the more reasonable the person is, the more eager to engage you
in open-minded and congenial discussion, the more sure you can be that
you're talking to Satan in disguise! Turn away! Do not listen! It's a
trap!" What is particularly cute about this trick is that it is a
perfect 'wild card', so lacking in content that any sect or creed or
conspiracy can use it effectively. Did anyone invent this brilliant
adaptation, or is it a wild meme that domesticated itself by attaching
itself to whatever memes were competing for hosts in its neighborhood?
Nobody knows, but now it is available for anybody to use."
-Dan Dennett
Tang Huyen
DharmaTroll wrote:
> Yeah, I was born into one of the world's largest cults,
> and was taught to drink the blood of the vampire every
> Sunday morning so that I, too, would have eternal life,
> etc., and was insulted by nuns in grade-school almost
> as much as I'm insulted around here. But I'm not
> carrying it in my head anymore, Brother Tang. My
> problem with religious dogmatists these days is that
> they want to pollute my planet and not let my gay
> friends marry each other. They're really annoying,
> Brother Tang. It's rather practical, though, not some
> neurosis that Fu and I are "carrying around in our
> heads". I can't speak for Fu, but I'd bet he's probably
> motivated by similar concerns.
<<I was born into one of the world's largest cults,
and was taught to drink the blood of the vampire every
Sunday morning so that I, too, would have eternal life,
etc.>>
You are, if not wrong, at least quite beside the
point. You and Fu were taught content, surely,
and this includes all the claims of monopoly of
Christianity, and not just the claim about there
being one and only one God, the God of Jewish
mythology. Fu takes all such claims in dead
seriousness, now and probably for the duration
of his life. However, what you and Fu were
taught in addition to content was the structure
of thinking, the framework of your mind, and
such structure of thinking is dead and unyielding
realism and literalism. It is that part that jumps
right out in Fu and you, even if the emotional
reactiveness (anger, bitterness, agitation, etc.)
is also very obvious. The Church framed your
mind, for good, and you enjoy no leeway about
it. With such structure of mind freezing you up,
you have "seized" (sorry for the tautology) and
are totally stuck. Once such structure of mind has
been worked into you and has attained to
functional independence, the Church can let you
go physically but you have been trapped for good
mentally. You are a walking relict of Jewish
mythology.
<<Actually, it's classic Evangelical dogma:
"Without God, without accepting Jesus, makes
all spirituality into materialism, a willful madness
of Godless Atheists.">> DharmaTroll.
The Church taught you to believe and get eternal
life (or salvation), or not believe and get eternal
death (or damnation), but that is only the content.
What is even more salient is the structure, in that
the Church made you into a dead realist and
literalist, and whether you believe the content that
the Church taught you or not, the Church has
made you into an either-or thinker, a dualistic
thinker of hardened dualism (sorry for the
tautology). So either you think the content that
the Church taught you, or you think the contrary
to it, but the Church left you with no other choice,
and you have grovellingly obeyed, right down to
the last comma. You have never learnt to not think
that way, and to think some other way, like to
leave the Church behind and live your life in
independence from the Church and in disregard to
it. That part is forbidden to you by the Church,
and you meekly accept. You have been an
exceedingly obedient follower with regard to that
(tacit) injunction, regardless of all your
ostentatious rebellion. The Church made you
follow it in good faith, or rebel against it in bad
faith, but the latter alternative is still to follow the
Church grovellingly, only in bad faith and with all
the content reversed (like from "God exists" to
"God does not exist"), and you are not allowed to
take any other option, like dropping God and
letting him take care of himself, and you have
quite obliged from your own free will.
Fu and you have never learnt to live in freedom,
and that is what the Church exacts from him and
you, regardless of all your ostentatious rebellion.
You know, intellectually, the methods (dharma-s)
to liberate yourself, but in your ardent rebellion
against Jewish mythology, you have never quite got
around to practicing any of them. All it would take
is to calm down, relax and be serene, and the hold
that the Church enjoys on you would be released
and forsaken, but you have never even begun such
endeavour. That part makes you a fake.
The Old One (Lao-zi) says: a thousand-mile trip
begins with a single step. You have never made
that step. I hope that you will, before you crash like
Jigme and Fu. They are now beyond redemption
because of it. You still have some chance of
breaking free from the Church, but only if you
actually practice Buddhism.
Tang Huyen
Nobody in Particular
That's exactly it.
Never learned to live in freedom.
Completely enslaved by their total rejection of anything that
does not fit neatly in their nice little belief system of scientism.
There is a difference between the two though.
While both of them dish out ridicule and ad hominem attacks
(Dharmatroll much more than Fu, though) against those whose belief
systems differ from the one they have chosen, Fu can also take it.
Dharmatroll reacts sensitively to and whines about perceived insults,
even if they are not real; even after it has been explained to him
that there was no insult. His need to be certain and to defend his
belief system is very strong, while Fu simply shrugs off challenges.
A quote from long ago on these groups comes to mind:
"Certitude conquers doubt, not ignorance. And with doubt conquered,
ignorance is invincible."
-- Lee Dillion
Evelyn
"Appledog" <oliver....@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:9e598484-162f-4639...@d9g2000prh.googlegroups.com...
It's the (mis)characterizations and preconceptions about people that get
tiresome. It would be so much more "buddhist" to take the "I'm OK, you're
OK" kind of an approach. Life is too short and full of pain and misery.
Being kind to one another never goes out of sync with any religion, no
matter what it is, and is always met well by the receiver and observer
alike. It is so much less stressful.
--
Evelyn
"Even as a mother protects with her life her only child, So with a boundless
heart let one cherish all living beings." --Sutta Nipata 1.8
Evelyn
"Tang Huyen" <tanghuyen{delete}@gmail.com[remove]> wrote in message
news:FLmdnT5NSeXOhLnW...@supernews.com...
Tang I disagree with you completely about Fu and Dharmatroll. Both of them
seem to me, NOT to carry their former religious affiliation around with
them. But then, they have YOU to do it for them, harping on it repeatedly.
liaM
Where's the beef ?
zenworm
Lee Rudolph
>Le 12/12/2009 11:29 PM, Tang Huyen a �crit :
>>
>> The Old One (Lao-zi) says: a thousand-mile trip
>> begins with a single step. You have never made
>> that step. I hope that you will, before you crash like
>> Jigme and Fu. They are now beyond redemption
>> because of it. You still have some chance of
>> breaking free from the Church, but only if you
>> actually practice Buddhism.
>
>Where's the beef ?
Still on the hoof; one of those Hinduist sacred cow type things, innit--
"biftek bleu", comme on dit.
It is also said (probably not by the Old One, no matter how transliterated--
though I suppose I shouldn't put anything past him) "Charity begins at home,
but should not end there". A thousand-mile trip begins with a single step:
likewise, it ends with a single step. Does it end where it begins? Should
it? Should it not? "Without going out of my door [etc.]", as the Old One
also (is said to have) said.
Lee Rudolph
liaM
>>> because of it. You still have some chance of
>>> breaking free from the Church, but only if you
>>> actually practice Buddhism.
>>
>>> Tang Huyen
>>
>> Where's the beef ?
>
>
> wormy
>
>
> ZN :D
Occupational therapy :(
Déjà Flu
> On Dec 12, 8:55 am, Tang Huyen <tanghuyen{dele...@gmail.com[remove]>
> wrote:
>> there is an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times
>> "Paranormal Flexibility", by Charles M. Blow.
>>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/opinion/12blow.html
>
> Nice article, Brother Tang.
The actual study is more informative:
http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=490#1
Notice that the historical surveys cited are from 3 different
sources than PEW and would have to be examined to see if the
upward Woo-trend is actually valid. Need I mention that PEW
rhymes with both "skew" and "screw"?
> More like the Tang-banger spends the major part of his time and energy
> fighting his imaginary enemies, onto who he projects wild fantasies
> and bios. Have you no other windmills to tilt at, Brother Tang?
It's not as simple as that, methinks. A rational position threatens
Tang's delusion that Buddhist practice equates to the complete
acceptance of whatever superstitious claims can be made. His
Magnificent Manuscript of ten or more years ago may have been based
on this position. I was never allowed to read it, but I suspect that
it equates some varieties of religious experience to some varieties
of Buddhist experience. Hence, our position is dangerous to him.
It wasn't until I flamed some anti-science codger that he glimpsed
what might be in store for himself that he pronounced me "crashed",
a pronouncement that I have made every effort to support since it
actually meant that I would demand proof for superstitious claims
and be utterly intolerant of Woo, Buddhist or otherwise. I'm sure
you've observed that Ad Hominim is the classic defense for Woo,
so his reaction is unsurprising.
> However, the op-ed piece is rather interesting. You see, I've always
> thought that Catholicism (or other flavors of Christianity) serve as a
> kind of vaccine against other woo-woo. That is, statistically, church-
> going papal-worshiping Catholics tend to have much lower rate of
> belief in 'spiritual energy' pulsing from things like 'mountains,
> trees or crystals.' I figure that we are naturally superstitious, and
> that the Catholic beliefs max-out all the superstitious circuitry and
> there's no room for more. You buy the traditional miraculous stories,
> and then you pretty much are rational and thus skeptical toward
> astrology, acupuncture, palm-reading, crystal energies, and paranormal
> powers.
This (genetics/wiring) is the claim ("natural superstition") made
by many, but I don't agree with it and have never seen studies
(outside of my own family and friends) that suggest it. It seems to
me that indoctrination, lack of education and media influence
(I could mention the likes of Chopsticks, Armstrong, etc.), as well as
the HUGE increase in popular misinformation are the real reasons.
It's easy to trace the enormous growth of popular ignorance over
the past 3 decades and the internet has contributed considerably to
it. So much, in fact, that it has become difficult to distinguish
real information from noise there. As for educational standards? LOL!
> That's pretty much how it is with devout Catholics I know: they laugh
> at palm-readers and talk about trees and cats being 'illusions', and
> dreams being as real as waking life. In most ways, they are more sane
> than the supernaturalists on these boards, Brother Tang, but they
> allow their madness to take over for one hour on Sunday mornings, when
> they exercise that circuitry, and then it's back to normal life.
The Devout Catholics around here work to prevent poor women and
girls from having abortions, just as in Africa. They don't promote
birth control or condoms. They stigmatize gays and blacks out of the
clear blue sky during a trip to the shooting range.
> What this fellow talks about sounds more like my New-Age Nutter
> Neighbors here in La-La-Land. I'm going to a party this evening (I
> even invited Robbie to it on Facebook). It's hosted by one of the most
> superstitious woo-woo-ists I know, but he's a really nice guy, even
> though he believes in everything, from spooks to paranormal powers,
> and between Buddhist events, attends Shamanic rituals. Here's the
> blurb from tonight's party:
>
> "Join us for something a little magical this holiday season. Good
> fun, fellowship, food, and a peek into your fortune. For fun,
> mystery, and illumination, choose among our masters of oracle, which
> will include readings in tarot, astrology, palm and others. Bring a
> dish and prepare for the unexpected. Donations for mini-readings will
> be given to a local Buddhist sangha. The readings will begin around
> 7:30pm and some reading slots my fill up. But come ye all for
> merriment and magic, regardless. It has been foretold, a good time
> will be had by all."
Remember to rig your teeth with bungee strings so you don't have
to look for them every time you laugh them out.
> Should be fun. Though half the folks there actually take such shit
> seriously. It's the Buddhists and New-Agers that seem to create what I
> call the "birds' nest" of superstitions, bending the dogmas to weave
> into their colorful nests. I actually don't have an opinion on which
> is better (or worse): buying into the traditional package, as in being
> a devout Catholic, or being a multi-superstitionist, and believing all
> sorts of things, from reincarnation, astral planes, acupuncture
> healing, 'energies' from rocks and crystals, sending healing woo-woo
> to people who are sick, and tonight's tarot cards and palmistry. At
> least in the traditional sense, I would think you're immune to more
> crap, as the overpowering dominant meme destroys all the other
> superstitious memes. Whereas you have much more flexibility with the
> woo-woo bird's nest, but it isn't contained, and your nonsensical
> disconnect to reality can just keep expanding. Some of the folks I'll
> see tonight talk like tabloid stories, where every headline in the
> tabloid is patently false. The closest we have on this list to that is
> Keynes, but I know a dozen such folks that live within a ten minute
> walk from my house, and several of them will be at the woo-woo party
> tonight!
Tang, alas, is hardly immune, in fact, he regularly conjures his own
Woo just as he does here. His mind is as open as The Vast Sky Through
Which The Quackers Fly.
>> (that they
>> carry in their head) even as they still harbour secret
>> sympathy for it, in the Stockholm Syndrome. They
>> are stuck with it, the Church (that they carry in their
>> head), and have either to fight it all the way or follow
>> it all the way. Fu repeatedly follows the many claims
>> of exclusivity of the Church, not just the monotheistic
>> one, in that to him, the words "God", "grace", "the
>> soul", "faith" may only be used in Christianity and
>> nowhere else.
>
> I don't see any of that in Fu: that's your fantasy, Brother Tang, and
> yours alone. But I find the subject of this op-ed very interesting. In
> some ways I prefer the bird's nest nutters, as they are at least more
> open sexually than Christianists, who instead tend to have a denial of
> nature and their sexuality. But the nesters are easily swayed by
> conspiracy theories and pseudo-science and have no way to flush the
> skeptical toilet, and so the shit just keeps piling up, much more than
> needed to make a small, comfy nest of selected eclectic memes.
In one sense, he's correct. Those are emotionally loaded words that
have no use whatsoever in Buddhist practice or rational thinking.
They are best seen as the names of dangerous memes that appear in
all the Desert Religions and surely violate all Buddhist principles
in any imaginable sense. If Tang wishes to contribute his own
definitions for them other than the commonly understood dictionary
definitions, he should do so or stop whining about it.
>> Blow says: "Americans continue to cobble together
>> Mr. Potato Head-like spiritual identities from a
>> hodgepodge of beliefs ? bending dogmas to suit them
>> instead of bending themselves to fit a dogma." It is this
>> trick, namely "bending dogmas to suit them instead of
>> bending themselves to fit a dogma", that Fu and
>> DharmaTroll have never learnt to handle.
But Charles (http://blow.blogs.nytimes.com/)is a NYT writer
whose interest seems to be in the analysis of what the Righteous
Wingnuts will achieve in the next Circ d' Pop election and what
twists their delicate knickers in which direction.
If I were an intelligent black person, looking at what's going
on now in the Great Recession, I'd be concerned, too. I think
his real message is that America is a haven for Woo and to accept
Woo to that extent, you need to have given up your rational
mind.
> If you would talk about this phenomena, and not just shift back into
> your boring old projective caricature talk, Tang, I'd be interested in
> what you think about this.
Rub a lamp.
> Yeah, Mr. Potato Head is exactly what I
> call the "bird's nest nutter". Is it a good thing? It seems in so many
> cases to be a superficial collection of tru-isms and beliefs. Lots of
> them are rather unhealthy, such as a prejudice against certified
> physicians, and a distrust of doctors, combined with a blanket
> acceptance of just about any form of quackery. Doctors are portrayed
> as scientistic body mechanics who don't care about one's spirit and
> only want to make money like stockbrokers. Personally, I've had only
> good experiences with doctors, and the several of them in my extended
> family all are caring folks. Whereas church-going Catholics go to a
> real doctor when they are ill, and don't start ingesting a dozen
> herbal supplements that haven't been tested and spend money on quacks
> that perform "energy healing" and "reflexology" and "reiki" and the
> like. The aversion to science seems to bring with it a vulnerability
> to being duped by pseudo-science.
IBID, yer honor.
>> They can
>> engage in intellectual contortionism to fake Buddhism
>> and Chan/Zen in all their zaniness and contradiction,
>
> Now you're calling Fu and me [I] fakes? So I have a question for you. What
> is the difference between faking Buddhism and not faking Buddhism?
Oh, that's an easy one. In "Tangism", you have to let the Hindus (et al)
express their opinion, make dogma of it and then insert acceptance of
the various Wooisms just as the script writers did in the suttas. You
have to make the same butter from all the nuts.
> When I spent a semester after I graduated college at the IMS Vipassana
> retreat center, and did all that boring sitting and walking and
> sitting and walking for three months without speaking a word to anyone
> or writing a single post on usenet, how was I faking it, and how would
> my not faking it have been different? Sure, there are always a few
> thoughts that arise in the middle of sittings, like "I'm not a real
> Buddhist or spiritual person; I'm just a fake." But those thoughts
> just arise and then pop like soap-bubbles like other thoughts. So what
> is the difference between a Buddhist and a fake? Could it be only
> whether Tang likes you or not or whether or not Tang feels threatened
> by you? Might it be no more than that?
IBID again, but the suttas are a lot like the internet. Unless you
have experience with what your brain does and the ability to examine it
(which you do, thanks to your Brand New Prefrontal Cortex), you're stuck
in the La Brea tar pit of dogma forever.
>> the
>> Church sternly dictated its framework to them in their
>> childhood, and they grovellingly accept it thereafter for
>> the duration of their lives, right down to the last comma,
>
> Tang, analyzing your Aspergers' rants, I notice the recurring theme of
> fatalism, that you think that folks are cast into a mold in their
> childhood and are henceforth incapable of growth or transformation.
Naw, that's his failed undergrad psychology studies somewhere in Ca.
Probably unlike you, I didn't grow up in The Church per se. I mean,
Dutch Reformed Sunday School for about 4 years only gave me a chance
to read the "Bible".
> When I returned to these boards after a few years, you were utterly
> convinced that I was Jigme (a more mature, intelligent, and kind
> poster from our past) and dismissed totally the idea that I may have
> grown and changed as I now sounded more like Jigme than like the old
> DT. So how many years was it that you kept calling me Jigme and
> couldn't see past your original caricature of DharmaTroll? For such a
> smart elevator boy you sure have some gaping blind spots Same with
> your talk about people and their alleged 'crashes'. Perhaps you're the
> one who has changed the least, and is still repeating the same old
> neurotic patterns, Tang. Lucky for you that you have lots of useful
> knowledge and skills, that's fantastic, but, um, growth ain't one
> of'em.
Does it strike you as a very definite trait among True Believers
that they are so able to convince themselves?
> Yeah, Fu and I scoff at superstitious memes and either we're infected
> with "Scientism" or "Stockholm Syndrome". What a hoot, Tang!
>
> In any case, I'll appeal to your rational side today, rather than
> taunt your neurotic side.
"Bring me your mind and I will pacify it."
-- Bodhidharma (the cartoon guy, not the real Bodhidharma who
didn't exist...:)
> You've brought up an interesting point with
> the difference between the "Mr. Potato Head" bird's-nesters versus the
> traditional religious types. You seem to favor the former. I'm not
> sure I do.
Distinctions without differences are always interesting.
> I actually find my Jewish friends to be the most healthy of
> all. The ones who don't have beliefs in an afterlife or a literal
> Cosmic Beastie, and really don't have many beliefs at all, but have a
> strong liking of tradition and do it all up for the religious holidays
> and rituals, and use that to feel grounded and connected to family,
> community, and the universe at large. I like the Jewish non-believing
> traditionalists better than either the Christian believers (who tend
> to have sexual problems, and associated prejudices, like aversion to
> gays), and the bird's-nesters, who are endlessly groping for more
> beliefs and magic to cling to, and who push off and dislike their own
> culture, especially anything that has to do with science, medicine, or
> rationality. Indeed, the Jews who then go on to practice Buddhism,
> while still keeping traditional rituals and their Judaism, seem to be
> the healthiest folks I know. This is only anecdotal, and so worthless
> except as a starting point to explore, but the several examples of
> such folks like this who I know are the healthiest of all: they are
> flexible, and the non-dogmatic parts of Buddhism integrate well with
> their non-belief-oriented Judaism; and they are skeptical and don't
> deny the reality of the world or credulously accept babble of energies
> or paranormal woo-woo.
Good luck there, but I do have something to say about it (consider
it part of our introduction). When I did my comparative religion
study (age 12-14) I had to steal books from the school library and
had two very close Jewish friends. I concluded that Judaism was a club
rather than a religion. What they didn't have that the Xians had
(in spades) was GUILT. As for the rest, I'm up with Hitchens on it -
just wave and say the right Solstice Formula as long as they don't
try to get elected to Congress and try to legislate their memes.
In conclusion,
...well, conclusions are part of the problem, nyet? ;)
--
Ubi dubium ibi libertas
liaM
The spirit incarnate of dogen echoes in my mind, reading you !
Our Vietnamese convicted scholar incapable of thought
take heed and lose face here and now !
Déjà Flu
> You are, if not wrong, at least quite beside the
> point. [yes, you are]
And for a self-proclaimed "intellectual", incredibly
stupid. It is, most often, impossible to argue with
ignorance. But it is not impossible to argue against
the effects of it, to disenfranchise it in society,
to promote truth and rational thought and to limit
its destruction of children's minds. What "church"
would we "break free" of? All of them. Every single
stinking one. Including the Church of Tang, disguised
as Buddhism but simply another version of self-deception.
Incapable of communication, reason, conversation, it
continues - as robotic as the "churches" - generating
it's own dogma and hoping for authority, the smallest
bit of which lends power to it. And thus your followers,
those who babble bits of mindless drivel in fatuous
formulas, adore you. I have never been happier than
being "beyond redemption" - especially your version.
Thank you for the warnings that have kept me from falling
into the pit of Buddhism. I would never have thought it
was so awful as you've shown it to be. For a long time
I thought it was simply self-infatuation - indifference
to others, to the world, to the suffering of children,
accepting suppression of women, gay people; blindness to war,
disease, hunger - things like that. But you have shown me that
it can be a vicious, obsessive thing, too - demanding compliance
to dogma, denying personal communication, discussion, or
understanding in common language. But that seems to always be
the case when reason is abandoned and the memes go unexamined.
Thanks again for the lesson.
Déjà Flu
> Le 12/12/2009 11:29 PM, Tang Huyen a �crit :
>>
<parsnips>
>> The Old One (Lao-zi) says: a thousand-mile trip
>> begins with a single step. You have never made
>> that step. I hope that you will, before you crash like
>> Jigme and Fu. They are now beyond redemption
>> because of it. You still have some chance of
>> breaking free from the Church, but only if you
>> actually practice Buddhism.
>>
>> Tang Huyen
>>
>
> Where's the beef ?
(lol)
Sorry, the last McD's in Iceland is now closed.
Tang Huyen
Lee Rudolph wrote:
> liaM:
>
> >Where's the beef ?
>
> Still on the hoof; one of those Hinduist sacred cow
>
> type things, innit--"biftek bleu", comme on dit.
>
> It is also said (probably not by the Old One, no
> matter how transliterated--though I suppose I
> shouldn't put anything past him) "Charity begins at
> home, but should not end there". A thousand-mile
> trip begins with a single step: likewise, it ends with
> a single step. Does it end where it begins? Should
> it? Should it not? "Without going out of my door
> [etc.]", as the Old One also (is said to have) said.
One popular saying is: "You can't get there from
here."
However, all technicalities aside, the fundamental
assumption of both the Buddha and the Old One is
that the cultivator is open to himself, honest to
himself and true to himself. If such quality is present,
the cultivator is half way there already, even before
making a single step. If such quality is absent,
there is not much the Buddha and the Old One can
do. It is just that quality that I sense to be absent in
Fu and DharmaTroll. To me, they spend a major part
of their energy fooling themselves, even vastly more
than fighting Christianity. And once they start fooling
themselves, cultivation won't work. Therefore they
have never started at all, regardless of externalities.
Tang Huyen
liaM
Conclusion : Americans are not ready. Anyone who has kids knows
the mixity of genres of spiritual experiences as seen each
half hour on TV and over weeks and months in computer games,blogs,
and, gasp, the Usenet, is a feature of the american cloud
seeping across the face of the planet, poor planet.
What in this cloud is of any worth ? What does the cloud bring,
except fantasms and monsters fill up a space where
otherwise there is a chasm teeming with non-entity and mis-identity ?
Déjà Flu
> Tang Huyen <tanghuyen{delete}@gmail.com[remove]> wrote:
<exorcized>
>> Fu and you have never learnt to live in freedom,
>
> That's exactly it.
> Never learned to live in freedom.
And you would know this...how? When did "freedom" suddenly
get translated into "mindlessly stupid"? Has this become
another amorphous Tang-word, like "God" or "Grace"?
Did you know that the verse about thine eye actually applied
to nose-hairs? "If thy nose-hairs tickle thee, pluck them out!"
> Completely enslaved by their total rejection of anything that
> does not fit neatly in their nice little belief system of scientism.
Explain that, if you don't mind. For me science is just GD&GD,
but maybe you have something else in mind? Rejection? PFUI!
Simple proof would suffice for a claim. Extraordinary claims
require extraordinary proof. It's simple.
You know (or maybe not) that all the weird-ass experiences
(including "awakening") that happen in meditation are tossed
aside by Sid The Squid as being mere mental orgasms. In fact,
all the kensho and no-show and sushi-do stuff is worthless.
Know what happens? You just stop fooling yourself. That's it.
That's the whole frikkin' thing. You couldn't SELL that even
if you had Gurgle doing the ads, d00d!
> There is a difference between the two though.
> While both of them dish out ridicule and ad hominem attacks
> (Dharmatroll much more than Fu, though) against those whose belief
> systems differ from the one they have chosen, Fu can also take it.
If there's nothing to "take", there's no "taking" to be done.
Remind me, when was my last AH attack? When did I attack the
person rather than the crap? Even back in the day, when it looked
like I went after Evvie, it was only about the claims. And I still
don't like her authoritative sig (which should be frikkin' obvious
to anybody on the planet and not some yak-butter eater) [hya Ev! :)]
For that matter, when did DT ever do it? As far as I know, he's
never called a nutter a nutter without explaining (and arguing
in good form) his argument. That's not AH. What Tang does is AH.
> Dharmatroll reacts sensitively to and whines about perceived insults,
> even if they are not real; even after it has been explained to him
> that there was no insult. His need to be certain and to defend his
> belief system is very strong, while Fu simply shrugs off challenges.
But I do love a good conversation, Billy, and abhor talking about
people in the third person.
What's his/my/our "belief system"? I'm curious. Could you describe it?
What do we "believe in", according to you? You'll note that we don't
ask you about your beliefs. We much prefer you keep them silently
stashed under the laundry, but they seem to be oozing out all over.
What of ours? What are they? Is "believing in rational thought" like
"believing" in playing football?
Sooner or later, as a believer, you're going to have to present claims.
What are they? Space aliens? Eternal souls? Gods? States of being
like "grace" or "enlightenment"? "mindless absolute permanent perfection
non-acting overflowing toilets"? Oh, PULeeze!
> A quote from long ago on these groups comes to mind:
> "Certitude conquers doubt, not ignorance. And with doubt conquered,
> ignorance is invincible."
> -- Lee Dillion
Yes, Zen Master Lee was right - hence my sig.
Great Doubt and Great Determination - always.
But perhaps you're hiding your intent, as Tang does. Maybe you
want a license to believe and not to be questioned. All I can say,
if that's the case, is that you go do it in private and never say
another word about it and apply it only to yourself. But for believers,
that's impossible. Their strength is in numbers and in authority
over others. Especially women and children...
Tang Huyen
liaM wrote:
> Back then, Tony Blair was PM. A goth friend said :
> you can't trust him, he lies all the time. Now we find
> out, Tony Blair was gung ho on the war in Irak
> because of his christianity. That's a sock-puppet for
> sure, just like christian zen DT and Fu are for Tang.
> What do you think, is the end result something you
> can kick ? Kick Tony and Cherie Blair for their
> duplicity. Was Tang Huyen right all these years, to
> set up puppets to kick as a means to promote
> enlightenment ? Is Labor going to win, now that we
> know Blair was a warmonger crusader against Islam ?
The Los Angeles Times just has an article on
Blair and the Iraq war, by Henry Chu reporting
from London:
<<WMD not point of Iraq way, Tony Blair says
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the
staunchest ally of President Bush, says that absent
the WMD claims, he still would have found an
argument for invading Iraq to remove Saddam
Hussein.
Tony Blair, seen here at the United Nations New
York headquarters, says Saddam Hussein's ouster
was justified even without the threat of weapons of
mass destruction.>>
<<Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has
said he would have found a justification for invading
Iraq even without the now-discredited evidence that
Saddam Hussein was trying to produce weapons of
mass destruction.
"I would still have thought it right to remove him. I
mean, obviously you would have had to use and
deploy different arguments about the nature of the
threat," Blair told the BBC in an interview to be
broadcast this morning.
It was a startling admission from the onetime British
leader, who was President Bush's staunchest ally in
the decision to invade Iraq in 2003.>>
Tang Huyen
Déjà Flu
There is a gun called "the judge" and judges actually
buy them and keep them under their benches to protect
themselves from their judgments. In no case does the judge
know anything but the evidence presented. He/she knows
nothing about the mind of the defendant, though it is often
pretended that he/she does.
I doubt I could ever say something like, "the fundamental
assumption of both the Buddha and the Old One is that the
cultivator is open to himself, honest to himself and true
to himself". It would be disgustingly presumptuous and
authoritative, not to mention arrogant. It's not something
I would, unlike you, dare accuse the Buddha of saying.
There is no self to be true to, no self to be honest with,
no constancy or consistency. If that happens, then there
is a self. And it has a lot to do with religion.
I take many people that I've met here to be as "awakened"
as possible in the sense that people can be, and I count
many of them as friends. I find it strange that Ev is now
a friend and you, Tang, a stranger. But then, I like jokes.
Especially ironic ones.
Déjà Flu
>
> liaM wrote:
>
>> Back then, Tony Blair was PM. A goth friend said :
>> you can't trust him, he lies all the time. Now we find
>> out, Tony Blair was gung ho on the war in Irak
>> because of his christianity. That's a sock-puppet for
>> sure, just like christian zen DT and Fu are for Tang.
> It was a startling admission from the onetime British
> leader, who was President Bush's staunchest ally in
> the decision to invade Iraq in 2003.>>
wot?
Missed the point AGAIN?
Third time's deliberate, y'know.
Ola, liaMChop!
Evelyn
"Tang Huyen" <tanghuyen{delete}@gmail.com[remove]> wrote in message
news:0PqdnWr4lsezornW...@supernews.com...
Tang, I am sorry, but you are taking a wrong turn here. You are being very
presumptuous in thinking you know another persons spiritual state.
Consider please, that no matter where ANYONE is "at" on the path, it doesn't
matter. What matters is that they have begun their journey and are looking
within, and that they have realized that the Buddha was on to something, and
that they want to find, and relate to, and allow that something to reveal
itself to them. Don't put mile markers on the path and decide who has
come how far, slicing and dicing up the dharma.
Speaking of selves, you have created a new one.... a judge who thinks he
stands above while others are below. Kick him out. Dissolve him into
fluffy/emptiness and just laugh, please. Just be and let others be too.
Charles E Hardwidge
when I expressly removed them? Whatever autistic crap spout in here is one
thing but you've pissed me off on a personal level, sonny. It's between you
and Robert Epstein who's asshole of the year.
FU's trimmed. AGAIN.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
Nick Cramer
> [ . . . ]
> Consider please, that no matter where ANYONE is "at" on the path, it
> doesn't matter. What matters is that they have begun their journey and
> are looking within, and that they have realized that the Buddha was on to
> something, and that they want to find, and relate to, and allow that
> something to reveal itself to them. Don't put mile markers on the path
> and decide who has come how far, slicing and dicing up the dharma.
>
> Speaking of selves, you have created a new one.... a judge who thinks he
> stands above while others are below. Kick him out. Dissolve him into
> fluffy/emptiness and just laugh, please. Just be and let others be
> too.
When I was practicing Vipassana at Wat Muang Mang in Chiang Mai, Thailand,
another practitioner walked up to me and said, "I'm at the third degree of
enlightenment, where are you?" I replied that I don't count and walked on.
--
Nick, KI6VAV. Support severely wounded and disabled Veterans and their
families: https://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/ Thank a Veteran!
Support Our Troops: http://anymarine.com/ You are not forgotten.
Thanks ! ! ~Semper Fi~ USMC 1365061
Keynes
>DharmaTroll wrote:
>> On Dec 12, 8:55 am, Tang Huyen <tanghuyen{dele...@gmail.com[remove]>
>> wrote:
>>> there is an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times
>>> "Paranormal Flexibility", by Charles M. Blow.
>>>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/opinion/12blow.html
>>
>> Nice article, Brother Tang.
>
>The actual study is more informative:
>
>http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=490#1
>
>Notice that the historical surveys cited are from 3 different
>sources than PEW and would have to be examined to see if the
>upward Woo-trend is actually valid. Need I mention that PEW
>rhymes with both "skew" and "screw"?
Never trust the polls.
And don't trust the czechs either.
Get it in cash.
There are memes and memes. The scientistic position
is no one's invention or property. If it were as good as
all that, there wouldn't be evangelistic atheists falling
out of every window, striking blows for their particular
brand of mind set, just like all the others. Martians
can't tell the fruits from the nuts. Neither can we.
Look. All memes are off the mark. Take the time and
trouble to go beyond them and see for yourself what's
what. It isn't at all about certainties or infallible models.
Ordinary humanity is not rational, not anyone. Any model
is severely limited. Is limitation the truth? Say so and
you limit the options. For yourself alone. Get loose.
Feel the freedom. Just get out of your mind. If you
think you know something for truth, you are mistaken.
And it's all your own fault.
Evelyn
"Nick Cramer" <n_cram...@pacbell.net> wrote in message
news:20091212221449.307$T...@newsreader.com...
> "Evelyn" <evely...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> [ . . . ]
>> Consider please, that no matter where ANYONE is "at" on the path, it
>> doesn't matter. What matters is that they have begun their journey and
>> are looking within, and that they have realized that the Buddha was on to
>> something, and that they want to find, and relate to, and allow that
>> something to reveal itself to them. Don't put mile markers on the path
>> and decide who has come how far, slicing and dicing up the dharma.
>>
>> Speaking of selves, you have created a new one.... a judge who thinks he
>> stands above while others are below. Kick him out. Dissolve him into
>> fluffy/emptiness and just laugh, please. Just be and let others be
>> too.
>
> When I was practicing Vipassana at Wat Muang Mang in Chiang Mai, Thailand,
> another practitioner walked up to me and said, "I'm at the third degree of
> enlightenment, where are you?" I replied that I don't count and walked on.
>
Hi Nick,
Yes, exactly. If you are still counting you haven't gotten there yet!
(good seeing a familiar friend here!)
daletx
Oh, man! AHotY and none of us absfgians are even in the running? Damn!
DT
Charles E Hardwidge
"daletx" <dal...@gnusguy.com> wrote in message
news:4B246630...@gnusguy.com...
Then fuck off to the romper room. That's what it's there for.
I'm not even reading 99% of the shit in here. It's just same half dozen
posturing wankers who fucked these groups up.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
Keynes
Mumonkan case 11 -
"Joshu Examines a Monk in Meditation
Joshu went to a place were a monk had retired to meditate and asked him:
`What is, is what?'
The monk raised his fist.
Joshu replied: `Ships cannot remain where the water is too shallow.' And he
left.
A few days later Joshu went again to visit the monk and asked the same
question.
The monk answered the same way.
Joshu said: `Well given, well taken, well killed, well saved.' And he bowed
to the monk.
Mumon's Comment: The raised fist was the same both times. Why is it Joshu did
not admit the first and approved the second one? Where is the fault?
Whoever answers this knows that Joshu's tongue has no bone so he can use it
freely. Yet perhaps Joshu is wrong. Or, through that monk, he may have
discovered his mistake.
If anyone thinks that the one's insight exceeds the other's, he has no eyes.
The light of the eyes is as a comet,
And Zen's activity is as lightning.
The sword that kills the man
Is the sword that saves the man."
daletx
Oh, man! AHotY and none of us absfgians are even in the running? Damn!
DT
daletx
Oh, man! AHotY and none of us absfgians are even in the running? Damn!
DT
daletx
Oh, man! AHotY and none of us absfgians are even in the running? Damn!
DT
daletx
Oh, man! AHotY and none of us absfgians are even in the running? Damn!
DT
daletx
Oh, man! AHotY and none of us absfgians are even in the running? Damn!
DT
Nobody in Particular
The whole thing started when I read Carse's "The Religious Case
against Belief." There are all sorts of beliefs, not just religious,
such as socialism, scientism, etc.
Wikipedia: "The term scientism is used to describe the view that
natural science has authority over all other interpretations of life,
such as philosophical, religious, mythical, spiritual, or humanistic
explanations, and over other fields of inquiry, such as the social
sciences." From your posts, this is the belief you and DT subscribe
to. Everything has to be provable in terms of science. When I asked
DT how one would prove the existence of love, he babbled something
about equating "love" with "between". He also re-defined "scientism"
in a way I never heard of, so he could claim that I insulted him, then
kept whining about that, even after I told him I had no such intent.
OK, I equated AH and insult. My permanent excuse - I'm a furriner, no
speaka da lenguij. I'll stick to "insult." Calling someone a nutter
or a moron is an insult, regardless of how much proof one amassed for
one's own belief, or how fiercely one's belief clashes with that of
another. And DT whined about being insulted, not about AH. This
whining and the fact that he's very liberal with dispensing insults to
others makes him a hypocrite. I've never known you to whine about
being insulted, you moron.
As for my belief, I think that the more certitude a person exhibits,
the higher the probability that he's wrong. My intent is to learn
more about the nature of things. I believe that science does not have
all the answers, neither does mysticism. I certainly make no claim
that I do. When it comes to mysticism, I believe that "there is an
Unborn, Undying, Uncreated, Unchanging." Beyond that I do not know.
True-believers in scientism usually ascribe some other characteristics
to that, then attack it on the basis of those characteristics, the
classic strawman argument. That's why I'm reluctant to use the word
"god", because almost everyone ascribes a whole bunch of
characteristics to that concept, all of which miss the point by trying
to eff the ineffable. I'm not prepared to defend my belief, since I
do not assert it to be provable, certain or superior to others. It's
simply something I believe.
"Great Doubt and Great Determination - always." - Exactly. EXACTLY!
Except that nothing is sacrosanct from being doubted. Not even
science. Not even DT. Not even you.
I have no idea what you mean by "GD&GD". I'm not attacking science,
but the belief in scientism.
liaM
Got it. Thanks.
John C.Lilly, a scientist who became a mystic, wrote a great book
about belief "The Eye of the Cyclone". Do you know it?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9xCwM9osW0
liaM
...
Got it. Thanks.
John C.Lilly, a scientist who became a mystic, wrote a great book
about belief "The Center of the Cyclone". Do you know it?
zenworm
> nothing about the mind of the defendant, though it is often
> pretended that he/she does.}}
if your sigline is true for you...
(not a projection but an living understanding)
wouldn't the word (*anything*)
in the paragraph above
be written as "everything"?
Is "anything" a form of 'doubtless' dogmatic absolutism?
> I doubt I could ever say something like, "the fundamental
> assumption of both the Buddha and the Old One is that the
> cultivator is open to himself, honest to himself and true
> to himself". It would be disgustingly presumptuous and
> authoritative, not to mention arrogant. It's not something
> I would, unlike you, dare accuse the Buddha of saying.
>
> There is no self to be true to, no self to be honest with,
> no constancy or consistency. If that happens, then there
> is a self. And it has a lot to do with religion.
is this
"no self to be true to, no self to be honest with"
constant and consistant?
this seems dogmaticly inconsistant...
> I take many people that I've met here to be as "awakened"
> as possible in the sense that people can be, and I count
> many of them as friends. I find it strange that Ev is now
> a friend and you, Tang, a stranger. But then, I like jokes.
> Especially ironic ones.
>
> --
> Ubi dubium ibi libertas
"Ubi dubium"... are you sure?
ZN :D
absolute permanent perfection overflowing without action
zenworm
belief in doubt with great determination?
does this help?
Appledog
I wish I could show you the profoundly deep realizations, the beauty
of the secret flame, the magic of wondrous truth, the intricacy of the
nature of physical laws.. But all I can do is show you a single frame
and hope you get the whole movie. Here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaking_tube
Now here's some homework for you. Given Speaking Tube technology, what
do you call two giant parabolic dishes with speaking rings in front of
them? You know, where you stand in front of a parabolic dish and speak
into the ring erected in front of it, then listen to the ring to hear
the other side? You've seen those before, haven't you?
-
Lee Rudolph
>Mumonkan case 11 -
...
> The light of the eyes is as a comet,
> And Zen's activity is as lightning.
> The sword that kills the man
> Is the sword that saves the man."
The sword slips in, the sword slips out...
but the pinochle is mightier than the sword.
Lee Rudolph
zenworm
big fish?
ZN :D _/|\_
Tang Huyen
Evelyn wrote:
> Tang, I am sorry, but you are taking a wrong turn here.
> You are being very presumptuous in thinking you know
> another persons spiritual state. Consider please, that no
> matter where ANYONE is "at" on the path, it doesn't
> matter. What matters is that they have begun their
> journey and are looking within, and that they have
> realized that the Buddha was on to something, and that
> they want to find, and relate to, and allow that something
> to reveal itself to them. Don't put mile markers on the
> path and decide who has come how far, slicing and
> dicing up the dharma.
>
> Speaking of selves, you have created a new one.... a
> judge who thinks he stands above while others are below.
> Kick him out. Dissolve him into fluffy/emptiness and
> just laugh, please. Just be and let others be too.
Thank you for your advice, especially in the last
paragraph. But you have again violated your own
injunction, which you proclaim from the rooftop
only to violate in the same breath.
<<Tang, I am sorry, but you are taking a wrong
turn here. You are being very presumptuous in
thinking you know another persons spiritual state.>>
After proclaiming such ignorance, which is
presumably universal and unbypassable, you charge
right in to totally and completely violate it in both
letter and spirit:
<<Speaking of selves, you have created a new
one.... a judge who thinks he stands above while
others are below.>>
You evidently have created a new self.... a judge
who thinks she stands above while others are below.
You are being very presumptuous in thinking you
know another person's spiritual state, in this case
mine. Please at least turn your advice back and
apply it to yourself first, so that you can serve as
example to others and teach them by example.
Otherwise you can be accused of hypocrisy -- you
tell others to do what you say but do not do what
you do.
Again you contradict yourself, within a few lines, as
I previously pointed out. You fail to apply our own
advice to yourself. Do you take yourself to be
superior to your own norms and standards, that you
proclaim to others?
That said, let me turn to:
<<Consider please, that no matter where ANYONE
is "at" on the path, it doesn't matter. What matters
is that they have begun their journey and are looking
within, and that they have realized that the Buddha
was on to something, and that they want to find, and
relate to, and allow that something to reveal itself to
them.>>
Of course the first teaching in Oriental wisdom is "to
turn within", "to look within". However it is just this
bit of wisdom that I fail to observe in Fu and
DharmaTroll. To me, they immediately turn without
and look without, to matter as their God. It serves as
their Ersatz God, to replace the Christian God (that
they carry in their head).
In a previous post, I said that the Christian Church
taught Fu and DharmaTroll a structure of thinking,
which is dead realism and literalism. I forgot to add
that intertwined with this dead realism and literalism
is absolutism, in that what they think in content (that
they take as salient) is immediately lifted to the level
of absolute, in the image of the Christian God (that
they carry in their head, as their absolute reference).
Matter is thus immediately lifted by them to the level
of absolute, as the absolute reference, to which
everything is resolved (which is the level of their
Christian God).
Sphere, another refugee from Christianity, shares
with them this holy trinity, namely realism, literalism
and absolutism. On 20 Sep 2009, Sphere started a
new thread: "Existence is a bad idea", and the whole
body of his post was: <<The universe is much easier
to understand without the verb "to be".>>
Elsewhere he said:
<<Note that a completely objectless worldview is of
necessity a completely non-dualist worldview, with
words being mere conventions which impose a
delusional partitioning upon that which has no
inherent dividing lines. The partitioning caused by
words can be quite useful, but it isn't in any sense
real.>>
If so, then why does he insist that everything be
subjected to the Three Characteristics, rather than
something else, like their contraries, or the absence
of any signs, marks and characteristics at all? If he
insists on the Three Characteristics, then they are
"real" to im, and ultimately real.
Elsewhere he said:
<<How can people claim there are no such things
as ghosts? I see dead people talking on TV all the
time.
This crazy notion of existence obscures the fact
that devas certainly arose in Buddha's time, and
even do so today in some parts of the world.
Of course the devas, just like God Buddha, are
subject to action. With time people will not act as
if they exist, and they will arise no longer. To talk
of them as existing or not existing completely
misses the fact that they happen.>>
So, after they arise and before they arise no longer,
they happen, and if they happen, they exist,
however temporary and partial their existence may
be. Why begrudge the label "existence" to them,
especially as he said:
<<They [including 'existence'] merely offer up a
useful description, and other descriptions may be
equally useful.>>?
Existence is merely a useful description, but he
treats it in effect as an absolute (just as he treats
the Three Characteristics), even as he denies it
on both sides. His Christian upbringing leads him
to think of what he takes to be salient in absolutes,
like the Three Characteristics and existence (this
last being also expressed by the verb "to be"). By
lifting existence to the level of absolute, he finds
that nothing could satisfy it, therefore to him
existence is a bad idea (just as to him God is a bad
idea, but strangely he does not take the Three
Characteristics to be bad ideas).
Overall, on one hand he wants to play
conventionalist with regard to language and
thought, on the other (in his real actions) he
wants to be hyper-literalist and hyper-realist, with
the Three Characteristics serving as his
redoubt -- his metaphysical Archimedian Platform,
his God -- in full metaphysical rigour, from which
he would not budge. Existence mirrors them as the
negative metaphysical Archimedian Platform, his
God -- in full metaphysical rigour, from which he
would not budge, even if nothing qualifies
(metaphysicians like him do not like half-measures).
For Fu and DharmaTroll, what they think in
content (that they take as salient) is immediately
lifted to the level of absolute, in the image of the
Christian God (that they carry in their head, as their
absolute reference). Matter is thus immediately lifted
by them to the level of absolute. Sphere likewise
treats the Three Characteristics and existence (this
last being also expressed by the verb "to be") as
absolutes, in the image of the Christian God (that
he carries in his head, as his absolute reference),
though he likes the Three Characteristics and dislikes
existence, but they are all salient to him, which is
why he elects them to the level of absolute. It is
funny, that to him everything sticks to the Three
Characteristics on one side and slips from existence
on the other. Ah! The Procrustean bed!
The three men, despite their ostentatious lifelong
rebellion, are unreformed Christians. The structure
of thinking that the Church taught them long ago is
still alive and well in them. It holds them in abject
slavery, and they meekly and grovellingly obey it.
They have been framed, and their mind has "seized".
They have never learnt detachment and equability,
by which they could have gained some balance and
perspective on their former religion. It is the
elephant in their mind, omnipresent and omnipotent,
which is how their God is supposed to be. That part
is indelible, since they have never gotten a handle
on detachment and equability.
Tang Huyen
Charles E Hardwidge
>
> Thank you for your advice, especially in the last
> paragraph. But you have again violated your own
> injunction, which you proclaim from the rooftop
> only to violate in the same breath.
Yes, we know Evelyn can be a nannying gossip, and it doesn't take five
minutes to write a potted analysis of everyone who regularly visits these
groups, or the over-arching group mentality. Been there, done that.
What you fail to get is practicality and sociability. That's a matter of the
"how-to" and "grease". Repeating rules (dogma, policy, theologies) and
appeals(negativity, chasing, and moaning) just makes it worse.
Can you, for once in your life, STFU and stop flapping. DO something and let
assholes trip themselves up. Don't protest. Don't dither. Don't whine
louder. DO SOMETHING, FFS.
I've been looking at tripods. I'm having to learn and balance a whole
stack of shit. But it's all applied and will end in a kickable result not
windy whining. Something tangible not forgettable words on a screen.
Fucking hell. In 2-3 years time I could've won a notable competition, be
selling my shit, and be on the path to artistic success. You'll still be
grinding the same old crap in a newsgroup nobody reads.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
Hollywood Lee
The beauty of photography, even that thought out and using a tripod, is
that it is merely forgettable pixels on a screen. Same with your life.
So make the mark you wish to make for the reasons you want. But don't
fool yourself into thinking it means much of anything beyond those you
help or hurt.
Evelyn
Hi Tang,
You are absolutely right in that I am guilty of the same thing, in making a
judgement call, and thank you for pointing that out for me. I honestly do
appreciate it. It just gives me more reason to remain silent as I do so
much of the time. The rest of your post is just explanations and excuses
(albeit very well said ones) for doing the same thing before, and continuing
to do it even in the above post, yourself.
So it continues, the usenet cannibalism, in which we devour one another with
criticism. Goodness, we just never learn.... even you and I.... do we?
It is really none of our business what their spiritual state is. We try
to make it our own, and offer criticism without being invited to do so, or
believing people in the way they account for themselves and what they
believe and feel. The key in someone's actually getting it right is that
they ask the right questions and get the right answers at just the right
time, to help them realize this or that aspect of the path. We cannot
give it to another person, and unless they are ready to ask and learn, we
are wasting our time (and our breath) and perhaps we all ought to be out
flying kites in the park, as you so often said!
And you know, Tang it was you who taught me so much, about this very thing
in so many of your posts.... but we both keep forgetting it and falling into
our old bad habits.
Dharma is a process. I no longer believe in sparks flying and suddenly the
bells ring and we are enlightened, magically. I believe there are many a
quiet moment in that process when we go "AHA!" and we get some other aspect
of dharma, and that what we call awakening, is a continuing process.
Then we forget again and fall into old bad habits, criticizing others and we
need to be reminded, as you reminded me. Thank you again.
I have come to a place where I think that just being kind to others is the
purest, truest and best dharma practice. If they ASK you what you think
of their practice, their beliefs, their mental habits, etc. Then giving
them an answer, no matter how critical, is fair game. But if what we say
makes them feel bad, or shames them before others, and they are not
encouraged and inspired on the path, then it is absolutely not dharma.
Dharmatroll and Fu, and you and I are just human beings, ..... and when we
are challenged or insulted, like everyone else, we get defensive and do the
exact same thing back that was done to them. Finger pointing, escalating
the insults, etc. And it is only through that process that people learn
the pointlessness of it, and learn not to retaliate. In nature nothing is
wasted. So it is with spiritual understanding. This is the real alchemy
of dharma..... even the shit is fuel for growth.
You know, in a way I have watched Dharmatroll grow up and become a man.... a
thinking, bright, good man. I have watched Fu change too, and you too.
And let's not even go there.... as to how much I myself have changed. As
I have often said to you before...... have faith in the process. We will
never get out of this world alive or without suffering. So be kind to
everyone in whatever way you can..... even Fu and Dharmatroll (and me too)
but most of all be kind to yourself.
Tang Huyen
Evelyn wrote:
If so, you should keep your opinions on spirituality
to yourself. If others want to discuss it, it is up to
them, and you should not interfere. Yet you keep
charging in to interfere, especially in giving advice
that is unasked, as above.
<<But if what we say makes them feel bad, or
shames them before others, and they are not
encouraged and inspired on the path, then it is
absolutely not dharma.>>
You talk about absolute dharma and absolute
undharma. I envy your certainty and
absoluteness. I have to live with ambiguity,
uncertainty and fuzziness. But as I pointed out, Fu,
DharmaTroll and Sphere are into absoluteness,
because of their Christian upbringing, so are you
perchance showing your Christian background also?
Where is your self-awareness?
Tang Huyen
Lee Rudolph
>Goodness, we just never learn.... even you and I.... do we?
When the paradigmatic example of "learning" is conditioned response--
say, standing on one's hind legs and begging while a doggy-treat is
dangled above one's head, the sort of "new trick" that an "old dog"
(possibly The Old One himself: or not?) is proverbially said to be
unsuited to learning--then to say "we just never learn" has one
meaning. And I suppose that, being doggedly committed to crass
physicalism as I am, with the commitment to behaviorism that that
presumably entails, I should accept that paradigm as the only one.
However, I don't seem to. Rather, I want to use "learning" also
to refer to a more fluid, not conditioned (or, at least, not
transparently conditioned) respons*iveness* to the *flow* of
stimuli (illusory though they may be). As a corollary, I would
have to say "we just never learn" has quite another meaning.
In her preceding sentence, Evelyn had written:
>So it continues, the usenet cannibalism, in which we devour one another with
>criticism.
Here again, I feel an urge to play _distinguo_. After "we devour",
do "we" digest and assimilate "one another", or do "we" vomit undigested
fragments of "one another"? Two quite different meanings in two cases.
Lee Rudolph
Appledog
wrote:
> "Tang Huyen" <tanghuyen{dele...@gmail.com[remove]> wrote in message
Doing something takes money, and you don't have any.
-
daletx
> Tang, why did you add absfg back to the post headers without
> notification when I expressly removed them? Whatever autistic crap spout
> in here is one thing but you've pissed me off on a personal level,
> sonny. It's between you and Robert Epstein who's asshole of the year.
>
> FU's trimmed. AGAIN.
Oh, man! AHOTY and none of us absfgians are even in the running? Damn!
DT
halfawake
> "Kitty P" <pain...@charter.net> writes:
>
>
>>"DharmaTroll" <dharm...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
>>news:0a208d00-7bc3-4a19...@v30g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...
>>On Dec 12, 1:53 am, Keynes <Key...@earthlinkspam.net> wrote:
>>
>>>On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 22:13:36 -0800 (PST), DharmaTroll
>>><dharmatr...@my-deja.com>
>>>wrote:
>
> ...
>
>>>>As the monks continued on their way, Tang was brooding and
>>>>preoccupied. Unable to hold his silence, he spoke out. "Brother
>>>>Trollpa, our spiritual training teaches us to avoid any mentation
>>>>about women, much less any actual physical contact with women, but you
>>>>picked that one up on your shoulders and carried her!"
>>>
>>>>"Brother Tang," Trollpa replied, "I set her down on the other side,
>>>>while you are still carrying her!"
>
> ...
>
>>>Holy warrior.
>>
>>>Denialist Nutter
>>
>>.
>>A shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living
>>that suits all cases.
>>- Carl Jung
>
>
> And an uppity woman will pinch everyone, in time.
> - Uncle Carl's Shadow Self
>
> Lee Rudolph
"But whatever you do son,
Don't pinch that uppity woman
Cause Lord she'll make a mess out of you...!"
- Blind Lemon Lee
halfawake
> Lee Rudolph wrote:
>
>> "Kitty P" <pain...@charter.net> writes:
>>
>>> "DharmaTroll" <dharm...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
>>> news:0a208d00-7bc3-4a19...@v30g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...
>>>
>>> On Dec 12, 1:53 am, Keynes <Key...@earthlinkspam.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 22:13:36 -0800 (PST), DharmaTroll
>>>> <dharmatr...@my-deja.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>
>> ...
>>
>>>>> As the monks continued on their way, Tang was brooding and
>>>>> preoccupied. Unable to hold his silence, he spoke out. "Brother
>>>>> Trollpa, our spiritual training teaches us to avoid any mentation
>>>>> about women, much less any actual physical contact with women, but you
>>>>> picked that one up on your shoulders and carried her!"
>>>>> "Brother Tang," Trollpa replied, "I set her down on the other side,
>>>>> while you are still carrying her!"
>>
>> ...
>>
>>>> Holy warrior.
>>>> Denialist Nutter
>>>
>>> .
>>> A shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for
>>> living that suits all cases.
>>> - Carl Jung
>
>
> Maybe not, but Samsonite cases all suits...
>
>> And an uppity woman will pinch everyone, in time.
>> - Uncle Carl's Shadow Self
>
>
> Oooh, is there a line? Me next!
>
> DT
down, boy; your GF wants to pinch you
all to herself.
Robert
= = = = = = = = = =
halfawake
> On Dec 12, 8:55 am, Tang Huyen <tanghuyen{dele...@gmail.com[remove]>
> wrote:
>
>>there is an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times
>>"Paranormal Flexibility", by Charles M. Blow.
>>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/opinion/12blow.html
>
> Nice article, Brother Tang.
>
>
>><<The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life
>>released a report on Wednesday that is bound to
>>stir conversation about the increasingly complicated
>>cacophony of spirituality in America � a mash-up
>>of traditional faiths, fantasy and mythology.>>
>>
>><<Twenty percent of Protestants and 28 percent
>>of Catholics said they believe in reincarnation, which
>>flies in the face of Christianity�s rapture scenario.
>>Furthermore, about the same percentages said they
>>believe in astrology, yoga as a spiritual practice and
>>the idea that there is �spiritual energy� pulsing from
>>things like �mountains, trees or crystals.� Uh-oh.
>>Someone�s God is going to be jealous.
>>
>>Surprisingly, in some cases, those who identified
>>themselves as Christian were more likely to believe
>>these things than those who were unaffiliated. (It
>>should be noted that unaffiliated is not the same as
>>nonbeliever. Many are spiritual people who simply
>>haven�t found the right church, synagogue, mosque,
>>coven, Ouija board club, or whatever.)>>
>>
>><<The report is further evidence that Americans
>>continue to cobble together Mr. Potato Head-like
>>spiritual identities from a hodgepodge of
>>beliefs � bending dogmas to suit them instead of
>>bending themselves to fit a dogma. And this appears
>>to be leading to more spirituality, not less. Cue the
>>harps, and the sitars, and the tablas, and the whale
>>music.>>
>>
>>This mix-and-match approach seems rather
>>laissez-faire, even promiscuous, relative to the strict
>>either-or approach of Fu and DharmaTroll, for whom
>>you can be either pro-Christianity all the way or
>>anti-Christianity all the way, but have no other option,
>>like the above cocktail ones, least of all the option of
>>living in independence from the Church and in
>>disregard to it. This last is total anathema to Fu and
>>DharmaTroll, both of whom spend the major part of
>>their time and energy fighting the Church
>
>
> More like the Tang-banger spends the major part of his time and energy
> fighting his imaginary enemies, onto who he projects wild fantasies
> and bios. Have you no other windmills to tilt at, Brother Tang?
>
> However, the op-ed piece is rather interesting. You see, I've always
> thought that Catholicism (or other flavors of Christianity) serve as a
> kind of vaccine against other woo-woo. That is, statistically, church-
> going papal-worshiping Catholics tend to have much lower rate of
> belief in 'spiritual energy' pulsing from things like 'mountains,
> trees or crystals.'
NTTAWWT.
robert
Evelyn
Tang,
I am as much or even more uncertain than anyone. Don't make the mistake of
believing I think in absolutes. I used to, but what little buddhism I
understand has taught me the error of that way. Yes, I had a Christian
background like many others, and there is a certain "therapeutic aversion"
that many of us use to escape it. I went through a lot of that, and
occasionally it still comes up. I just hate to see young children
indoctrinated with such toxic stuff. Did you ever see the film "Jesus
Camp?" You could just cry.
In their "therapeutic aversion" some choose militant atheism, some dress in
funny clothes from other countries, memorize the customs and languages,
cuisine, religion and such.......and some vilify their former affiliation at
every turn. I have done all the above. Guilty of all at one time or
another.
So now I have come around just a little bit, and softening my view, because
I have realized that aversion is just as bad as attachment. What I have
also seen is that for the most part, organized buddhism has the exact same
elements of what I call "toxic memes" that are there in any other religion.
It is all just another pecking-order-ego-game.
The buddha's buddhism does seem so much simpler than that. Wasn't it Hal
and you who kept telling me to go back to the source and let all the rest
go?
As for my interference in that which is "none of our business," that we both
keep butting in..... well, yes. I do sometimes do that, but only if I
think I can bring some clarity. I really don't want to make anyone feel
bad. I back off and disappear like a puff of smoke when someone tries to
pin me down or engage in a confrontation. I do that because I know they
aren't listening with their full attention. Ego arguments are not my cup
of tea.
But I know I have done right when the person thanks me for whatever it is I
have said. Sometimes they surprise me and tell me so! So now I am
thanking you for having taught me so much too.
Speaking of tea, I have a nice cup of really nice chinese green tea waiting
for me right now. Hubby just called to tell me it is ready. Wish I could
share it with you through the computer!
Evelyn
"Lee Rudolph" <lrud...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:hg35mb$hjl$1...@reader1.panix.com...
I am sure that anything and everything is possible. Usenet was always
referred to by our dear departed friend Hal as the "shithouse walls".
Everything and anything....... good, bad and indifferent.
Nobody in Particular
FYI:
This is the 6th identical post that showed up here.
Nobody in Particular
Yes.
Tang Huyen
Nobody in Particular wrote:
> zenworm:
>
> > belief in doubt with great determination?
> > does this help?
>
> Yes.
zenworm is deadly penetrating and
very helpful. I would think that anybody
who wants to cultivate should ask him,
oxtail, chingang to mess with, just to
stir things up, but that is only my opinion.
Their intervention is divine, to me.
Tang Huyen
Appledog
>
> You've seen those before, haven't you?
>
> big fish?
Yes - I call it the KGS nuclear war paradox. You see, on KGS, there
is no political discussion allowed whatsoever, and anyone breaking the
rules is kicked off or banned, depending on the severity and frequency
of the transgression(s). The paradox isn't really a paradox but a
noticing, that there exists some situation where talking about
politics would be okay - in fact, a situation may exist where talking
about politics is the only thing that KGS is good for. For example, in
the event of global thermonuclear war, should KGS remain in existance
in any form it's only valued use would be communication about the war,
how to survive, etc - all "non-go" communication, all the time.
I see you have clearly not yet reached that point with your zen.
Therefore I would politely request that you will not mention Big Fish
again, least of all for your own benefit if not for all of ours. Or at
least not mention it repetitively like Tang, Jen, Herbzet, Robert,
Nobody in Particular, Liam, and so forth.
Now, about those speaking tubes? :-)
-
Appledog
> "Tang Huyen" <tanghuyen{dele...@gmail.com[remove]> wrote in message
Given you turned out fine, I wonder what amount of you crying about
Jesus Camp is self-serving and how much is the true realization that
it doesn't matter if they go to Jesus Camp or not, as long as they're
as smart as you were and can get out of it? Ahh, the eternal
paradox...
-
Déjà Flu
First, just FYI:
"There is, monks, an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unfabricated. If there
were not that unborn, unbecome, unmade, unfabricated, there would not
be the case that emancipation from the born, become, made, fabricated
would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn, unbecome,
unmade, unfabricated, emancipation from the born, become, made, ?
fabricated is discerned." Ud 8.3
Refers to a state of mind, an understanding of mind.
Not some kinda spook thingie. But don't take my word for it...
> I have no idea what you mean by "GD&GD".
Great doubt and great determination, of course.
> I'm not attacking science, but the belief in scientism.
That's a non-word often used as a pejorative, William,
unless you care to provide a meaningful definition.
Science is a process - the very one by which Ud 8.3 can be
examined without any belief at all.
Déjà Flu
...
> When I was practicing Vipassana at Wat Muang Mang in Chiang Mai, Thailand,
> another practitioner walked up to me and said, "I'm at the third degree of
> enlightenment, where are you?" I replied that I don't count and walked on.
I once took a piss there, actually, and one of my brothers-in-law
lives not that far away. I'm betting that "another practitioner"
was an American. Don't suppose you know Lord Sumedho, perchance?
Charles E Hardwidge
news:7baa1de4-0323-4733...@y32g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
> Doing something takes money, and you don't have any.
If HL is talking bullshit and running around in circles you're just making
stuff up. You're in so deep and been at it so long you've lost any sense of
perspective and basic self-correcting mechanisms. What was the point in what
either of you said beyond looking hard and pissing someone off?
I could go away for another year and come back, and NOBODY will have DONE
anything, CHANGED, or GROWN these groups. It will just be DEEPER into
FAILURE like it has been for YEARS. All it takes is for a couple to LEAVE
and these groups will COLLAPSE and NOBODY will mourn them.
How is this arrogance and pettiness different to a collapsed economy or
climate change denial? You're stuck so deeply in your bubble and obsessed
with winning you can't see how you've destroyed everything and driven
everyone else away. That's YOU. That's what YOU did.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
Charles E Hardwidge
"D�j� Flu" <cha...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:UcmdnZHF07wkCLjW...@posted.toastnet...
> Nobody in Particular wrote:
>
> First, just FYI:
>
> "There is, monks, an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unfabricated. If there
> were not that unborn, unbecome, unmade, unfabricated, there would not
> be the case that emancipation from the born, become, made, fabricated
> would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn, unbecome,
> unmade, unfabricated, emancipation from the born, become, made, ?
> fabricated is discerned." Ud 8.3
>
> Refers to a state of mind, an understanding of mind.
> Not some kinda spook thingie. But don't take my word for it...
Can't be bothered about any of that but I do know people banging on about
FAST GLASS over their cheap sandwiches under a fluorescently lit camera club
ain't going anywhere. I don't have to paint a picture of nasal slideshows of
holidays and melodramatic affairs with the vicar's wife to make the point.
Camera go click. 'Nuff said.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
Charles E Hardwidge
news:cNednRKd2Lu1qLjW...@supernews.com...
> zenworm is deadly penetrating and
> very helpful. I would think that anybody
> who wants to cultivate should ask him,
> oxtail, chingang to mess with, just to
> stir things up, but that is only my opinion.
> Their intervention is divine, to me.
You're talking bullshit again. We're talking head deeply up ass and not
seeing how you encourage assholes who've been nothing but destructive. Guess
what? The world doesn't read your shit and abandoned these groups years ago.
THAT is the sad cold reality of the situation.
When are you going to DO SOMETHING and DEVELOP AN AUDIENCE. C'mon, stop
lecturing and passing judgement on newspaper clipping's and GET OFF YOUR
ASS. Stop looking in the mirror and kissing the asses of your inbred fanclub
and do something. Anything. BOIL A FUCKING EGG.
I bet you can't. It just goes over your head or you have a panic attack.
Why? Because the shit you're writing is just WORDS ON A SCREEN. It's all
talk. What did Tang do today? What light did he brighten in the world? I'll
tell you. NOTHING. ZIP. NADA.
--
Charles E Hardwidge
Nobody in Particular
> Nobody in Particular wrote:
>
> First, just FYI:
>
> "There is, monks, an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unfabricated. If
> there were not that unborn, unbecome, unmade, unfabricated, there
> would not be the case that emancipation from the born, become, made,
> fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an
> unborn, unbecome, unmade, unfabricated, emancipation from the born,
> become, made, ? fabricated is discerned." Ud 8.3
Right. I abbreviated it because I assumed you were familiar with the
full passage.
> Refers to a state of mind, an understanding of mind.
> Not some kinda spook thingie.
That is your interpretation.
> But don't take my word for it...
I won't.
>> I have no idea what you mean by "GD&GD".
>
> Great doubt and great determination, of course.
>
>> I'm not attacking science, but the belief in scientism.
>
> That's a non-word often used as a pejorative, William,
> unless you care to provide a meaningful definition.
Which word are you referring to?
If you mean "scientism," I did provide a definition which you snipped.
It's not any more pejorative than "religion", with which it shares
many similarities.
If you mean any of the other words, I don't know what you're trying to
say.
> Science is a process - the very one by which Ud 8.3 can be
> examined without any belief at all.
Right. "A" process. Not "the only authorized" process.
But to say that Ud 8.3 "Refers to a state of mind, an understanding of
mind. Not some kinda spook thingie."
Is a form of belief, not substantiated by the text.
Nobody in Particular
Zenworm and Oxtail have helped me a great deal in the past and
possibly will do so again in the future. In my opinion, there is no
need to stir things up; their intervention seems to come always at the
right time and in the right form. I haven't had any interaction with
Chingang yet.
Déjà Flu
Right. Not at all. Examine it for yourself.
If you have found a better process, please let everyone know.
Describe it clearly, in common language, and relate it to
common experience. Describe how it can be tested and verified.
Or do you have some special metascience that you can transmit
by some unknown magic? That would be fine, too. Please,
get on with it. I'm game.
Déjà Flu
Indeed so.
"All around the mulberry bush", etc...
Nobody in Particular
>
> Right. Not at all. Examine it for yourself.
> If you have found a better process, please let everyone know.
"Better", judged by what criteria? Judged by whom? In which
circumstance? Applied to what topic? With what purpose?
> Describe it clearly, in common language, and relate it to
> common experience.
Where "common experience" may only refer to what you consider
allowable, not to what you label "woo"?
> Describe how it can be tested and verified.
How would you test and verify love? If someone experiences love and
you don't, how could that person convince you? If someone were to
keep their eyes tightly shut, how could you describe the experience of
"red" to them? If someone never tasted a custard apple fruit, how
could you describe the taste to them?
> Or do you have some special metascience that you can transmit
> by some unknown magic?
No, I do not.
Déjà Flu
...
> How would you test and verify love?
About the same way you could test and verify hate.
If you're going to assert that "love" is some
metaphysical "thing", some unknowable something,
you should be prepared to do the same for the rest
of the emotional gamut as well.
But you've strayed from the argument and it's no
longer valid without recursion. I'm easily bored
by 3rd-grade stuff. Bye bye, Bill.
Nobody in Particular
> Nobody in Particular wrote:
> ...
>> How would you test and verify love?
>
> About the same way you could test and verify hate.
> If you're going to assert that "love" is some
> metaphysical "thing", some unknowable something,
> you should be prepared to do the same for the rest
> of the emotional gamut as well.
Strawman!
Never asserted such a thing.
The original argument was about the belief in scientism. About your
insistence on testability and verifiability.
> But you've strayed from the argument and it's no
> longer valid without recursion. I'm easily bored
> by 3rd-grade stuff. Bye bye, Bill.
Bye, Ch'an.
zenworm
>
> > Evelyn wrote:
<snip>
> As I have often said to you before......
> have faith in the process.
> We will never get out of this world alive or without suffering.
> So be kind to everyone in whatever way you can.....
> even Fu and Dharmatroll (and me too)
> but most of all be kind to yourself.
> --
> Evelyn
>
Is 'self forgiveness' both
redemption and annihilation
simultaneously?
ZN :D _/|\_
absolute permanent perfection overflowing without action
zenworm
wrote:
> "Tang Huyen" <tanghuyen{dele...@gmail.com[remove]> wrote in message
if you use a flash your world will be a little brighter
Why whine about darkness when you can bring light?
No one else can bring what you can bring.
This is your chance.
Increase your films sensitivity and level up.
see, it's brighter already.
halfawake
> Tang, why did you add absfg back to the post headers without
> notification when I expressly removed them? Whatever autistic crap spout
> in here is one thing but you've pissed me off on a personal level,
> sonny. It's between you and Robert Epstein who's asshole of the year.
>
> FU's trimmed. AGAIN.
>
look in the mirror, no-brain.
Robert
- - - - - - - -
halfawake
> Tang, why did you add absfg back to the post headers without
> notification when I expressly removed them? Whatever autistic crap spout
> in here is one thing but you've pissed me off on a personal level,
> sonny.
Charles wrote:
"Wah, wah, I'm a little baby and I'm very mad that you re-added absfg to
the header. I'm gonna hold my breath til I turn blue. And I wet my
diaper, wah!"
halfawake
> Charles E Hardwidge wrote:
>
>> Tang, why did you add absfg back to the post headers without
>> notification when I expressly removed them? Whatever autistic crap
>> spout in here is one thing but you've pissed me off on a personal
>> level, sonny. It's between you and Robert Epstein who's asshole of the
>> year.
>>
>> FU's trimmed. AGAIN.
>
>
> Oh, man! AHotY and none of us absfgians are even in the running? Damn!
>
> DT
yeah, that is just sick. trimming you out of the cross-post header too,
what a dis!
robert
halfawake
>
> "daletx" <dal...@gnusguy.com> wrote in message
> news:4B246630...@gnusguy.com...
>
>> Charles E Hardwidge wrote:
>>
>>> Tang, why did you add absfg back to the post headers without
>>> notification when I expressly removed them? Whatever autistic crap
>>> spout in here is one thing but you've pissed me off on a personal
>>> level, sonny. It's between you and Robert Epstein who's asshole of
>>> the year.
>>>
>>> FU's trimmed. AGAIN.
>>
>>
>> Oh, man! AHotY and none of us absfgians are even in the running? Damn!
>
>
> Then fuck off to the romper room. That's what it's there for.
>
> I'm not even reading 99% of the shit in here. It's just same half dozen
> posturing wankers who fucked these groups up.
>
Oh for shit's sake, arse-brain, if you're going to actually ADDRESS the
absfg-ians, you HAVE to include them in the header, or they can't read
the damn thing.
Now let's take this from the beginning:
�dip your little pen in the ink.
�write your little note.
�then send it to -------> the person you are trying to communicate with.
�then, stick your head back up your butt where it belongs until you need
to use it again. That recharges its battery.
Robert
= = = = = = = = = = = =
halfawake
> "Appledog" <oliver....@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:7baa1de4-0323-4733...@y32g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
>
>> Doing something takes money, and you don't have any.
>
>
> If HL is talking bullshit and running around in circles you're just making
> stuff up. You're in so deep and been at it so long you've lost any sense of
> perspective and basic self-correcting mechanisms. What was the point in
> what
> either of you said beyond looking hard and pissing someone off?
>
> I could go away for another year and come back, and NOBODY will have DONE
> anything, CHANGED, or GROWN these groups.
Hey I've done some things. How do you know what anyone has done? I
started two projects since the last time you were here, completed one of
them successfully, although the final work is in others' hands, so
that's out of my control, but it was a paying job and I did my part; and
I'm well into the next project, which also goes well and will be
completed end of January. So, there's some growth there, no need to be
quite so grumpy, old man. Haven't gotten back to the book yet, but I
have a talented editor who is committed to getting the thorny part done,
integrating some important material into the early part of the book,
that will allow me to go back to writing within the next few months, so
there's hope...
And it will be a worthwhile contribution to that strange area of theatre
literature - doesn't have a name, but I guess somewhere between
philosophy of drama and acting technique works; my first choice being to
see if Routledge is interested, since they are really the experts in
that sort of theatre esoterica, eg, Toporkov's "Stanislavsky in
Rehearsal" and Thomas Richards' "At Work with Grotowski on Physical
Actions." My book is about the structure of acting as both a raw craft
and as an artistic creation, and I analyze the structural elements in
what I think is a fairly unique way, with details that I haven't seen
anywhere else, so I hope it will be a decent contribution if it ever
gets finished. My acting students who saw the much earlier, much more
raw draft years ago, were influenced by it and it gave them an overall
orientation to the scope of the training process and the final product,
which seemed quite useful, so I know it will at least be helpful in
acting pedagogy.
Then I've got something like 2,000 pages worth of very specific original
lesson plans, all in the order of actual lessons, from the raw beginning
of the acting process all the way through full character work and
advanced applications to Classical work, which would focus on
Restoration-type comedy and Shakespeare in my program, Film & TV acting,
and Audition techniques, as well as some other areas beyond that, which
should form the basis for a complete actor's textbook. That's actually
a much larger project, but it would be much more comprehensive than
anything else on the market. There are plenty of acting workbooks, and
plenty of general acting theory books, but haven't seen anything with a
step-by-step comprehensive lesson plan of that depth that goes from
beginning to end of the training process.
Funnily enough, as this work becomes second nature after teaching it for
25 years, my interest has suddenly been piqued in music theory, and I am
now all excited about the harmonic progressions and scales used in early
Coltrane. Started re-listening to Giant Steps, Impressions and Chasin'
the Trane, three more-or-less early mid-career works of Coltrane's that
show his progressive work with improvisation. Reading about the chord
progression in Giant Steps and where it came from in his theory
training, and then listening carefully to Chasin' the Trane, realizing
that what I had heard and taken for granted for many years suddenly
became apparent to me - that a large aim of the piece is to perfect his
own understand of how to produce harmonic resonances in tandem to the
main improvisational line, so that they form a kind of
quasi-contrapuntal harmonic accompaniment to the off-kilter tetrachords
that he is using there - much more straightforward rhythmically in Giant
Steps, but Giant Steps is still the classic piece, a showpiece that
can't be matched.
If you listen to other very competent players try to play Giant Steps at
speed, you realize how awesome the effortlessness of Coltrane's version
really is. It's not a magic trick. I think he practiced the damn thing
around 12 hours a day while he was developing it. Well, if Giant Steps
is like Coltrane's "Bach piece" in terms of perfect structure and
execution; then Impressions and Chasin' the Trane are like his Mozart,
with great creative developments of and off the theme. Then later he
just goes nuts and switches tracks altogether. Just before he died, his
playing echoed the death-cries of an animal in pain, also an amazing
accomplishment of musical/theatrical-raw psycho-emotional expression,
but very very different from the technical Coltrane trying to solve
these intellectual problems that started in music school for a young genius.
Anyway, I found out about Coltrane's early background on Wikipedia and
looked up the textbook that was written by the musical resource of the
school - an amazing set of comprehensive books on chord progressions and
scales, and am just chomping at the bit to buy them. But considering
how many music books I already have, I won't give myself permission to
buy any new ones until I take out the old tenor sax and start making
some use of the old ones. I've got these new ones on my amazon wish
list and now I'm trying to figure out how to fit music back into my
schedule. I was always a creative improviser, but if I go back I want
to start with a sort of self-imposed re-training in certain technique
areas - certain types of chord progressions and what kinds of scales are
played over them. I also want to study Coltrane's greatest area of
musicological genius - his chord substitutions and how he took a simple
II-V-I progression that is standard in almost every popular song, and
created a series of substitutions that took an ordinary melody and led
it on a much more intricate journey. Of course this also posed new
technical challenges for the improvisor and created the complexity of
modern jazz song structure after be-bop/Charley Parker that he is
largely responsible for. So I want to get a clearer sense of how that
works harmonically and sharpen up my underlying chordal technique before
I go back to thinking "melody" and improvised lines again. That is work
that is best done at the piano, and the most interesting brass/woodwind
players in jazz have done this sort of work - sat down at the piano and
worked out the chord progression to the point where it is in their
listening when they play the melodic line.
It will just be DEEPER into
> FAILURE like it has been for YEARS.
Well, as I say, I think you are exaggerating and keep emphasizing this
story line without much evidence just to keep yourself miserable.
All it takes is for a couple to LEAVE
> and these groups will COLLAPSE and NOBODY will mourn them.
They DO collapse - regularly, and then magically a few people come back
and it starts up again. It really is a natural phenomenon, no need to
worry so much, Charles.
> How is this arrogance and pettiness different to a collapsed economy or
> climate change denial? You're stuck so deeply in your bubble and obsessed
> with winning you can't see how you've destroyed everything and driven
> everyone else away. That's YOU. That's what YOU did.
The problem with your repeated soapbox critique, Charles, is that you
never say anything specific, just rant. That's why I have always said,
lay off the Scotch and get your head together before you open your
mouth. This kind of lazy critique is just blowing off steam, and it is
subject to the kind of scrutiny you pretend to pay to others while just
randomly putting everyone down. Folks here are accomplishing plenty in
"real life" and they come here to talk about whatever they feel like,
not have a practical workshop. When and how did you confuse these
relaxed Buddhist forums with a Parlimentary internship, with you at the
helm? Why not just relax and be a little more friendly with the folks
here. It CAN be a sunny place here, not just a gloomy reflection of
your own mood.
Best,
Evelyn
"zenworm" <zens...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:6aeec03b-fc5f-4fe8...@p30g2000vbt.googlegroups.com...
> On Dec 13, 10:38 am, "Evelyn" <evelyn.r...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Evelyn wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>> As I have often said to you before......
>> have faith in the process.
>> We will never get out of this world alive or without suffering.
>> So be kind to everyone in whatever way you can.....
>> even Fu and Dharmatroll (and me too)
>> but most of all be kind to yourself.
>> --
>> Evelyn
>>
>
> Is 'self forgiveness' both
> redemption and annihilation
> simultaneously?
>
>
Why not?
Lee
"Charles E Hardwidge" <bo...@invalid.invalid> wrote in message
news:DDhVm.15025$Ym4....@text.news.virginmedia.com...
> "Appledog" <oliver....@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:7baa1de4-0323-4733...@y32g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
>
>> Doing something takes money, and you don't have any.
>
>
> perspective and basic self-correcting mechanisms.
no ! i have my pencil eraser !
i swear !
> What was the point in what
> either of you said beyond looking hard and pissing someone off?
sometimes pissing someone off
can have hilarity benefits.
> I could go away for another year
promises promises
> and come back,
indian giver
> and NOBODY will have DONE
> anything,
lackluster doingness addiction duly
noted. what else ya got?
>CHANGED, or GROWN these groups.
i got some green mold on some old
food in the fridge if you're in need of
something to grow.
> It will just be DEEPER into
> FAILURE like it has been for YEARS.
have you noticed that your caps lock
key occasionally gets stuck? just
wondering.
>All it takes is for a couple to LEAVE
> and these groups will COLLAPSE and NOBODY will mourn them.
yes but which couple? we have so many
lovely couples here that it would be
hard to judge whom might be the
essential scapegoat blame buckets.
> How is this arrogance and pettiness different to a collapsed economy or
> climate change denial?
maybe they could switch and the climate
could collapse and the economy could
change denial?
>You're stuck so deeply in your bubble and obsessed
> with winning you can't see how you've destroyed everything and driven
> everyone else away.
is this your version of fortune cookie 101 ?
> That's YOU. That's what YOU did.
and he did it HIS way.
[to the tune of "my way"]
zenworm
> "zenworm" <zensp...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:6aeec03b-fc5f-4fe8...@p30g2000vbt.googlegroups.com...
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Dec 13, 10:38 am, "Evelyn" <evelyn.r...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> > Evelyn wrote:
>
> > <snip>
>
> >> As I have often said to you before......
> >> have faith in the process.
> >> We will never get out of this world alive or without suffering.
> >> So be kind to everyone in whatever way you can.....
> >> even Fu and Dharmatroll (and me too)
> >> but most of all be kind to yourself.
> >> --
> >> Evelyn
>
> > Is 'self forgiveness' both
> > redemption and annihilation
> > simultaneously?
>
> Why not?
annihilation and redemption...
great doubt and great determination?
all wraped up simultaneousness of Moment?
Evelyn
Yes! :-)
Appledog
wrote:
> "Tang Huyen" <tanghuyen{dele...@gmail.com[remove]> wrote in message
>
> news:cNednRKd2Lu1qLjW...@supernews.com...
>
> > zenworm is deadly penetrating and
> > very helpful. I would think that anybody
> > who wants to cultivate should ask him,
> > oxtail, chingang to mess with, just to
> > stir things up, but that is only my opinion.
> > Their intervention is divine, to me.
>
> You're talking bullshit again.
Heh - zenworm deeply penetrating? No offense zenworm, but perhaps to
tang, you are. :-)
> We're talking head deeply up ass and not
> seeing how you encourage assholes who've been nothing but destructive. Guess
> what? The world doesn't read your shit and abandoned these groups years ago.
> THAT is the sad cold reality of the situation.
So what would someone be doing here? :) Personally, I'm looking tor
Morpheus. Or perhaps Neo, depending on how things work out.
> When are you going to DO SOMETHING and DEVELOP AN AUDIENCE. C'mon, stop
> lecturing and passing judgement on newspaper clipping's and GET OFF YOUR
> ASS. Stop looking in the mirror and kissing the asses of your inbred fanclub
> and do something. Anything. BOIL A FUCKING EGG.
>
> I bet you can't. It just goes over your head or you have a panic attack.
> Why? Because the shit you're writing is just WORDS ON A SCREEN. It's all
> talk. What did Tang do today? What light did he brighten in the world? I'll
> tell you. NOTHING. ZIP. NADA.
You're so over their heads Charles. Lol. Thats kind of sad though.
-
Appledog
We all have our little paranoid delusions of grandeur.
> No one else can bring what you can bring.
> This is your chance.
Actually i'm pretty certain I could bring whatever Charles could
bring, then some, and all in spades. Yes there is a certain je ne sais
quois that "only charles" could bring, which we could define as that
thing which "only charles could bring", but what is that,
substantially?
> Increase your films sensitivity and level up.
>
> see, it's brighter already.
Stop lying :) It takes work, but I can help you if you're up to it.
The first thing is to understand what I mean by lying, and the above
is one clue. You probably already know the theory, I am just aligning
our wavelengths of understanding for communication purposes.
-
Appledog
> Tang Huyen <tanghuyen{dele...@gmail.com[remove]> wrote:
>
> > Nobody in Particular wrote:
>
> >> zenworm:
>
> >> > belief in doubt with great determination?
> >> > does this help?
>
> >> Yes.
>
> > zenworm is deadly penetrating and
> > very helpful. I would think that anybody
> > who wants to cultivate should ask him,
> > oxtail, chingang to mess with, just to
> > stir things up, but that is only my opinion.
> > Their intervention is divine, to me.
>
> Zenworm and Oxtail have helped me a great deal in the past and
> possibly will do so again in the future. In my opinion, there is no
> need to stir things up;
Then don't. As the Chinese say, talk hand, do hand.
> their intervention seems to come always at the
> right time and in the right form.
Their intervention is irrelevant if you already know there's no need
to stir things up yet you don't practice it.
> I haven't had any interaction with Chingang yet.
I wonder if you'd start swearing at him too? :)
-
Appledog
I once took a student, whom I could easily control - it was trivial.
Of course I explain this from the teacher's perspective, just to
explain the guiding process. So, I investigated his level, but he was
against putting any label on where he was. He was in it for the
journey. He did it because he enjoyed it, and not to get anywhere.
I mused over this for quite some time. Needless to say, he *didn't*
get anywhere. He did enjoy his journey, I suppose. Last I checked he
was about the same level as when we parted years ago. Or should I say
when he decided to give up his studies.
I think you might want to look at the framework that practitioner had
been speaking from a second time. Whether or not you count, can you
count? It's like playing the guitar. However or not you improvise, CAN
you play the guitar properly? There's a huge difference between
someone who can improvise and someone who can improvise well.
If you're the sort of person who CAN count and just refuses to, what's
the point? If you're surrounded by seekers, who are on the same path
as you are, refusing to position yourself is also a form of ego.
There's certainly nothing wrong with knowing where you are, how else
are you to know what method to use and how often you need to practice
it? If you're unclear on THAT, or if you find yourself stagnating (as
I suspect) well, of course then the story makes a lot more sense.
I just hope you use it to better yourself instead of passing over this
and throwing it away.
-
Appledog
wrote:
> "Appledog" <oliver.rich...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:7baa1de4-0323-4733...@y32g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
>
> > Doing something takes money, and you don't have any.
>
> If HL is talking bullshit and running around in circles you're just making
> stuff up. You're in so deep and been at it so long you've lost any sense of
> perspective and basic self-correcting mechanisms. What was the point in what
> either of you said beyond looking hard and pissing someone off?
Getting you to change the track you're on, since obviously what you
are talking about is not helping you.
Not helping you at all.
So if you want to be helped, maybe waking up to the fact that you are
going on and on about nothing is the first step? Hey, I could be
wrong. I mean at least I won't keep repeating the same tired shit over
and over like tang or herbzet. If you don't get it or if I am wrong,
what's the point in beating a dead horse?
> I could go away for another year and come back, and NOBODY will have DONE
> anything, CHANGED, or GROWN these groups.
You're almost completely correct.
> It will just be DEEPER into
> FAILURE like it has been for YEARS. All it takes is for a couple to LEAVE
> and these groups will COLLAPSE and NOBODY will mourn them.
Yup.
> How is this arrogance and pettiness different to a collapsed economy or
> climate change denial?
I was going on about that years before you got here, Charles.
> You're stuck so deeply in your bubble and obsessed
> with winning you can't see how you've destroyed everything and driven
> everyone else away. That's YOU. That's what YOU did.
I hope you mean "you" plural, because if you're referring to me, this
will be a pretty short conversation :) I wouldn't want to continue on
and give you the feeling you were right. After all, that would mean I
was stuck in a bubble. Oddly enough, even if I wasn't, not discussing
this would be seen by you as evidence that I was trying to win. Ha ha
ha. Silly jen-likes. MMmmmm :)
-