Today at Meetingbrook: 03/27/2022

Saturday, April 02, 2022

Friday, April 01, 2022

as if, they could know

My christian friends think

I have left it all behind —

I cannot help them

It’s in their bones to decide

Who’s in and who’s out, wrongly

finally hearing, the gatha

Breathing in

I know

I AM

Breathing in

Breathing out

I smile

Dwelling in

This

Present

Moment

I know

This IS

A wonderful

Moment!

(With gratitude to Thich Nhat Hanh)

Thursday, March 31, 2022

marchons

Say goodbye to March

Such a nice transition month —

Take winter with you

should I try to pray

It is simple, pray

at all times. I cannot pray.

Yes you can, just pray

casting lure

politics, despair

all who enter there; such tripe

and trash fills the land

a friend’s birth/day

Haiku

(for Joseph)

When you were born, no

One taught you how to love all

You see — still, you do

(wfh, 31 mar2022)

when your mind changes, the world changes, for you, for us, for all

Of course you change the world. You don’t have to want to. You change it all the time. We all do.

Don’t get all ‘magic wand’ about this. Just look at how you are looking at the world.

Evil often seems to succeed, at least in the short run; goodness has a harder time prevailing. This reminds us that karma should not be understood as some inevitable calculus of moral cause and effect because it is not primarily a teaching about how to control what the world does to us. It is about our own spiritual development: how our lives are transformed by transforming our motivations.

That was one of the Buddha’s great insights: karma is not something I have, it is what I am, and what I am changes according to what I choose to do. This is implied by the Buddhist emphasis on non-self. My sense of self is a product of habitual ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. Just as my body is composed of the food I eat, so is my character constructed by my conscious choices. People are “punished” or “rewarded” not for what they have done but for what they have become, and what we intentionally do is what makes us what we are. To become a different kind of person is to experience the world in a different way. When your mind changes, the world changes. And when you respond differently to the world, the world usually responds differently to you.

Consistent with this view of karma, the traditional “six realms” of samsara do not need to be distinct worlds or planes of existence through which we transmigrate after death, according to our karma. They can also be the different ways we experience this world as our character, and therefore our attitude toward the world, changes.

Adapted from The Dharma of Dragons and Daemons © 2004 David R. Loy and Linda Goodhew, The Dharma of Dragons and Daemons. Reprinted by arrangement with Wisdom Publications, Inc., wisdompubs.org, in tricycle

The philosophy of mind thinkers ping pong between an idealist and a materialist explanation for the origin and root of consciousness. There’s a meet-in-the-middle explanation where mind and matter twirl around and through the brain without limitation to it.

Consciousness hides, like God, in plain sight. A pragmatic view is that consciousness works when it works and doesn’t when it doesn’t. Where it comes from and where it goes seem, to most, less interesting than the questions ‘where is it now?’ And, ‘Will it show up when needed?’

Still, the notion intrigues == “ When your mind changes, the world changes.”

Spooky laboratories and secret government programs worldwide play with ‘mind control’ experiments seeking to own the individual an thus change the world. Like very young children playing with fire they threaten destruction with their erratic intentions.

‘World’ and ‘mind’ might not be two things. Nor two no-things. Each might be the fluctuating on/off, appear/disappear blinking behavior of moving reality through this phenomenal transience of world/mind as mind/world.

Change your mind, change your world. “The” world, that which is the emanative expression of (currently) 7.9 billion human and many many more other beings populating this planet, and the inexpressible trillions of celestial bodies throughout cosmos, is, conceivably completely beyond the comprehension or control of any of us at any juncture of time or history.

But your world is not necessarily the world.

Or is it?

Is it?

What is

It?

God is what is God!

Either way,

Trust in

What is

Good

for you

For us

For all.

Wednesday, March 30, 2022

between truth and untruth, achieved through a creative retrieval

It is an open space we inhabit. A narrow open space. We barely fit.

To one side, truth. To other side, untruth. (What's going on between them?}

Abstract
The question concerning technology lies at the heart of human existence. As such it must take a central place in philosophy today. This importance, however, is veiled by a historical interpretation of technology as instrumental. This instrumentalism is the result of an ambiguity in the Aristotelian legacy that arises from an understanding of reality rooted in a theory of the categories, on the one hand, and a theory of causality on the other. This has left us with an ambiguous understanding of human making split by the twofold structure of artistic and representational thinking. The former is characteristic of empirical knowledge, the latter epistemological knowledge. This thesis follows Heidegger in arguing that an integral understanding of technology can only be achieved through a creative retrieval of Aristotle's ontology that interweaves the question of causality and the question of the categories, which we have outlined below as the interplay between potentiality and actuality, between being and non-being, and between truth and untruth. While indebted to Aristotle, this involves an important re-thinking of the nature of ontology, for it is made possible by exposing the limits of Aristotle’s theory of time, which understands time as a succession of present instants, and moving towards the Heideggerian understanding of presencing as the opening of a horizon in which things perdure. Consequently, this is an ontology in which technology is tied to our notion of time just as much as to our notion of being. After establishing this temporal ontology as the basis for an understanding of technology, in a unique way we apply it to the particular case of 3D printing and come to see that this technology is indeed more than an instrument; it is an interweaving of the epistemic and the poetic, the rational and the artistic. Thus I accept the consensus in contemporary philosophy of technology that questions of technology must be understood in terms of their political and social implications. However, unlike many thinkers in this field I also argue that they can be fruitfully understood in terms of a temporal ontology.

(-The Ontology of Technology, a Heideggerian Perspective, by Róisín Lally )

Everything has to be considered and 'understood in terms of their political and social implications.' It's no longer sufficient to have an isolated, distinct, and unrelated bit of truth or fact. Is it? Not that every new discovery isn't important and unique -- they are. Nor do we discard what we unveil because it seems difficult to fit and explain the discovery within the field or expanse of nearby informational data extant. We don't.

But, like a good joke, consider the audience. And like a questionable joke, consider the context. Moreover, like an unhappy hearer of a joke, consider the future consequences of acting in a hostile manner to the teller of the (so-called) joke. There is no universe where one thing is not related to everything else, where one action does not impact every future action.

The Buddha taught there were five things to consider before speaking.[v] Is what you’re about to say:

Factual and true

Helpful, or beneficial

Spoken with kindness and good-will (that is, hoping for the best for all involved)

Endearing (that is, spoken gently, in a way the other person can hear)

Timely (occasionally something true, helpful, and kind will not be endearing, or easy for someone to hear, in which case we think carefully about when to say it) (--on Bright Way Zen). cf. 42 – Buddha’s Teachings Part 4: Right Speech – Factual, Helpful, Kind, Pleasant, and Timely, The Zen Studies Podcast

Time as succession of instants? Or, presencing as the opening of a horizon in which things perdure?

Is time, being? Is being, time?

Is my time here nearing its cessation? Will my interfusion with being also end? In the midst of quantum fluctuation, appearance and disappearance, death and resurrection -- is my blinking into nothingness every millisecond a rebirth? A reincarnation? A return to the horizon of time-being as a new psychical phylum in a new and as yet undiscovered 'world' in itself unconscious to the coming-to-be emergence into the noetic realm of existence?

Forever a fetus.

Perennial hospice patient.

My first date with that attractive being.

My last bow exiting the zendo.

This creative retrieval we like to narratize as, and make reduction to, 'my life.'

'And' is what-is between truth and untruth.

And, this:

Miscere et comprehendere
quae, dispersa, dolet pro integritate

(Blend and comprehend
what, scattered, aches for wholeness)

(wfh)

Tuesday, March 29, 2022

in different ways and in different forms

creator creation creativity

father son holy spirit

being existence awareness

consciousness (in se). consciousness (ex se). realization (per se)

buddha dharma sangha

brahma vishnu shiva

brahman atman tat tvam asi

... ... ...

In the final line, I could not distinguish a 'third' -- but realize that this 'third' is the awareness 'you are that.'

Standing by coursing brook, the pseudo-delineation trinity (or threeness) is:

the fact of,
the expression of, and
the experience of

What we call creation is the expression of consciousness available to perception and (one of its qualities) experienced as twoness.

Perhaps the (seeming) tension between dvaita and advaita schools of thought is that "the world is real" of dvaita thought and "the world is illusion" of advaita thought is that the notion of "world" is not yet understood.

What is the scientific definition of world?

In scientific cosmology the world or universe is commonly defined as "[t]he totality of all space and time; all that is, has been, and will be". Theories of modality, on the other hand, talk of possible worlds as complete and consistent ways how things could have been. (Wikipedia)

Yes, it's there. No, its not now, nor ever has been, and will continue not to be --- that which we think it is.

Hence, we might be tempted to conclude, real and illusory simultaneously.

This from Quora:

Vedanta, the quintessence of the Veda, has discussed the three realities Brahma (Universal Spirit or Underlying reality), Jiva (individual soul) and Jagat (world) and, although different people have described Brahma in different ways and in different forms, the Ultimate Reality has been directly or indirectly identified with Brahma. The attempt to discuss problems such as 'What is the world and what is its creation', has given rise to the doctrines of Shrshtivada, Parinamavada and Vivartavada. (--Rishav Bharawaj, Quora)

The dog and I walked back from brook after sitting in green chair by hillside holding passed-beyond animals, lying on post-ice grounded leaves in chilly quiet of afternoon solitude.

With creation, consciousness.

In creator, no consciousness.

Hence the absolute witness is a cessation of any separate awareness or existence. (Something we watched at Sunday Evening Practice: The Absolute Witness ~ by Shinzen Young, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drLxJSpeb8c)

Yes, we like our consciousness, including an appreciation of 'the other.' And, yes, (I suspect), there is something attractive about complete immersion with no longer experiencing separation or duality.

In the Christian metaphor, one might say, Christ is consciousness. Creation as the experience of other, along with the recommendation to love what is other, because, (and here's the paradox), the other is no-other with love.

The metaphor and mythology continues that creation (consciousness) is put to death. Death, here, meaning cessation. But that, within three days, christ consciousness is resurrected and now permeates everything and everyone (again) without surcease. Albeit, a possible fluctuation of 'blinking'. That, and the enormity of it all: