Philosophical Message – Page 3

The Yin and Yang of Anxiety and Longing

Waiting. I am always waiting. Blame Pandora, if you have a need to blame. As the Buddha taught, humans in our inherently socialized condition always have to live with an undercurrent of anxiety and it’s mirror image, longing. So I wait. Waiting is what gives direction to my life.

Waiting is the arrow of time. The length of the shaft may be visualized as the strength of the longing. The arrow’s mirror image? The desire to avoid the anxiety associated with the lack of the object of longing.

Writing this way, in an impersonalized manner, allows any reader to fill in their own blanks. Seeing the arrow of longing speeding towards a desire, or, perhaps by its own heaviness, losing speed and falling to the earth, allows us the opportunity to see ourselves as one of the entities caught up in the human condition.

Once we can see that we are so caught up, and that our desires and fears make arrows, maybe we will be more careful about the type of arrows we craft. Are we making an arrow that will pierce someone else? Is this desirable or undesirable?

Why Yin and Yang? See how one defines the other, even if you don’t realize it at first.

Here’s another version that my writing group said sounded like a professor, less lively. BUT it provides some actionable information on ways to try to escape the pain of longing and anxiety.

The process of waiting draws the arrow of time. Time is inherent in waiting. Do tigers wait for their next meal? I am not sure. Probably they are focused on doing what it takes to get the next meal when hunger tells them it’s time to do so. Humans wait. And our domesticated animals.

Back to the arrow of time crafted by waiting. The length of the shaft may be visualized as the strength of the longing. The arrow’s mirror image? The desire to avoid the anxiety associated with the lack of the object of longing.

Or, once we can see that we are fashioning arrows with our waiting for certain things, we’ll take the Buddha’s advice, and start to learn to wait, rather than waiting for a particular thing. Once we see that waiting for a particular thing inherently brings anxiety, we might be open to seeing the Four Noble Truths of the Buddha in a new way. Suffering is universal. The cause of suffering is craving. Letting go of attachments to specific outcomes leads toward liberation from suffering. There is a path that can end suffering.

Here is what I wrote from a different prompt, having to do with stars.

The stars. All the stars? No. A particular set of stars draws her attention. She had waited for years for this moment. The training to sit patiently. The training to direct the arrow of attention with the flashlight of consciousness. Illuminating just what was important. Cygnus, the Great Swan, slowly approached the position that would allow the leap from earth to heaven.

The Great Swan was merely the skeleton that marked the more important subject, the Mother Goddess herself. That was the true tens of thousands of years ago and it was true on the day that Zinnia waited. Cygnus no longer had to work as the pole star, doing the hard labor of turning the universe. That was the task of the Little Bear these days. Zinnia’s heart pointed her eyes toward Cygus.

This little piece refers to the emerging modern understanding that humans way back 30,000 years ago had an advanced religion based on finding our place in the universe. One of the major stars of the constellation of Cygnus marks the exit of the birth canal of the great female figure that is formed by our sideways view of the Milky Way. This star was pole star way back when, not our currently named Polaris. So the mythology of the day had our spirits longing to return to the Great Mother through the star portal. It had to be at a particular time of year. See the writings of Andrew Collins and others.

Well, I might be shocked if someone actually reads this far and shares the results of their subsequent researches!

The Moons of Jupiter, and, well, Spiders

Or How to SEE the world

Last weekend, for the 4th of July holiday, I visited my friends from my new church. The 4th of July is actually the center of the “Holy Week” for this new, semi-atheist church. The Alpha and Omega Celebration is intended to help people cement their new view of life, relatively unencumbered by what they now see as an overly limiting world view imposed by their parents before they were able to think for themselves.

They don’t believe in, as the founder says, “a Big G god.” I feel like many of them (well, the group is quite tiny…so many is relative) have embraced reductionist atheism. But the “dogma,” or “scripture,” now limited to a document entitled “The Distinctions,” allows for belief in spirituality.

I volunteered to help the founder, Dan, in whatever way I can, based on my longtime study of the world’s (and history’s, and pre-history’s for that matter) religions. I may be ordained as the first “Curate,” as soon as we sort out the fact that I finally paid dues to join another church that I have attended for over 20 years, and don’t believe I should have to renounce one in order to join the other. However, I may soon care less, as the leadership of that church is refusing to have any formal soul searching about civil rights in this nation that is now hosting our spirits’ “vehicles.”

Anyway, the moons of Jupiter. Yes, so we had our Alpha and Omega celebration at Harper Lake last weekend. I actually got in the water and swam a bit. Then I got in a kayak and tried to kayak around a bit. My shoulders were ok, which was a surprise. Concern about the shoulders had kept me from believing I’d ever be able to get in a canoe or kayak again, even as I had fond memories of these activities in my youth. Sadly, I was not able to deal with the waves from the power boats sharing the lake, and it had been so long since I had used this skill set, I needed more room than usual to steer. After the second time that I found myself heading for or being headed at by a large vessel, I went back to shore. But it still felt like an independence.

Later, Dan got out the two telescopes he had bought for the occasion. Freedom from the religious ties that bind allows us to center ourselves in the cosmos revealed by science, and call it a religious practice. After the telescope purchase motivating non-event of the partial penumbral eclipse of the moon, we turned the scope to Jupiter. Finally, I saw it. A disk, not a point, and a series of pinpricks from 1 to 7 o’clock. I realized that those were the moons of Jupiter. WOW.

I say finally, because while the optics of the telescope were beyond any hopes I might have had, the features used to control the position and direction of tube were poor quality at best. Granted, it’s still a crime against humanity that they were so good for the supposed price of $60.00. That price and its implied consequences might have gone unnoticed in the past, but not now.

I feel so different to have seen the moons of Jupiter with my own eyes. And while the eclipse was a non-event, the detailed features of the moon were more amazing than any image I remember seeing. There are fine cracks in the surface, and super bright pinpricks that are reflections from I don’t know what.

My respect for those who had to make and aim their own telescopes 400 years ago has drastically increased. My personal thanks to the workers who made the one I used, allowing me a new window on the universe, before my cataracts deteriorate my visual processing further.

The full moon is a strong anchor of my first sighting of the Dead Sea, but the stronger anchor is the memory of the nuns sharing the beach the next morning, whose eyes I felt on my wet tee shirt. I had forgotten my bathing suit. The salt water made the wet tee shirt even more revealing than it would have been in fresh water.

The full moon will be a strong anchor of my first Alpha and Omega celebration, but the stronger anchor will be the moons of Jupiter. Of course, had I not known they were there, I wouldn’t have noticed them. Ten days later, I am still amazed by the optical quality of what was most likely a Chinese telescope. A $60 National Geographic branded window to a bigger world.

I am grateful for the Alpha and Omega experience of being positioned at the body of the spider, while my technologically enhanced senses reach out in all the directions that a spider’s legs do. We can see the world as a network of spiders with a new spider body at the point of every spider’s toe. Some of the legs reach back to more central spiders, until there’s no center, because everywhere is the center.

LauTzuTu and The Wind

I just ran across this little flash fiction I wrote back in 2015. Maybe it is more appropriate than ever. Even though I made up the monk’s name. :>)

This might be a Buddhist monk and not a Daoist monk as I envisioned when I wrote this…. So much for the selection in my clip art software.

LaoTzuTu set the pails of fresh stream water down and unbent his lean frame to look up at the darkening sky. The grey streaks were rapidly being obliterated in favor of an overall dark grey. He turned to glance back at the yard surrounding his stone hut. The branches of the trees were strongly swaying. They didn’t have the word doozie back in the year 300, but if they had, it would have entered his mind. The hut was sturdy. He had built it himself, stone by stone. It had a cellar. The old monk had laughed at him when he started digging. But LauTsuTu now, fifteen years later, felt vindicated. Yes, he had taken a vow of poverty. But that was related to money. The Taoists had no compulsion to punish the body or deny the senses. LauTzuTu had also planted some peaches and plums. Dried, they’d be safe in the cellar. A treat if bad times came. Something to break the monotony of disaster food, or no food, for that matter.

This wind was proving that his inner knowing had been sound. Fifteen, twenty, twenty five years of meditation practice left him feeling calm in the face of the storm. He was confident he would settle into his upper higher world soul, not his reptile brain, when the debris started hitting the hut. He also knew that his stone mason skills were good. He had learned from an old master. Still, the option of the shelter in the cellar was a comfort. And there were a few dried peaches left along with some sausage he had traded for a few weeks ago.

The wind was picking up now. Time to turn inward. He listened. What exactly is it that makes the sound of the wind, he wondered. Then he chuckled as he walked deliberately toward the hut, the pails of water swinging easily at his sides. He’d have plenty of time to think about it as he waited out the storm.

Choose Confidence over Humility

We act humble when those motivated by lower chakra energy impose their will on us. Usually, the imposers work categorically NOT for our own true good. Our own true good comes when we experience the consequences of our own decisions, and can thereby learn from them. In order to do this, we must work to overcome the “humility programming” we are given. How else may we remove the obstacles to confidence? I can find no other way to take the bushel out of the way of my shining light.

Embracing confidence over humility allows us to store up our treasures in heaven. Treasures of a spiritual nature (social capital) are no easier to earn (and maybe harder to earn) than financial treasures. But the interest accumulates automatically. We don’t have to waste our time seeking out the best 401k.

This little piece was written in E Prime. It avoids use of forms of the verb “to be.” Humility does not serve as the opposite of arrogance. Rather confidence does so. Confidence is deserved when earned through study, practice, or experience!

Don’t try too hard to understand. Just listen and enjoy the artwork. The audio is a different version that is not E-prime. I had missed 5 ises.

Pandora contemplating the now empty box. — Pandora’s Box Courtesy National Gallery of Art (USA)

Thanksgiving

Molars at the bottom of a jar — Have all my teeth fallen out????

Being somewhat of a grouch, even though recently I had several dreams about my teeth falling out, which I finally decided were not a warning to go to the dentist, but rather a message from my subconscious that I was losing my bite, and maybe some of my perceived bark, gratitude is something that I have to cultivate. I am truly filled with gratitude for being able to live a very comfortable life compared to most of the people in the world. We middle class Americans, as much as we disappear, still have it pretty good. I am really grateful that I have managed to work for my own company for 25 years. I really am grateful for not having to be in at 8 or even 7 am, as most working people do. It’s not that I am a shirker. I rarely leave before 7 pm when the work-load is normal. But I like the flexibility to pamper my night-personhood.

But grateful as I am for the privilege of living in the good old USA, it is truly depressing to watch so many people apparently veering off into a mindset so divorced from reality. What do Americans still agree on?

Well, traveling years ago in Europe, getting to know pit toilets for the first time at a fairly tender age, and then getting to study in Switzerland for a year in college, I had the opportunity to know what Europeans thought of Americans…

Americans are the people who have nice plumbing.

A Western Style toilet — Wasteful and comfortable. I am grateful for my toilet.

So here we go. Whether Democrat, Libertarian, Republican, or Alt Right of some type, we all (well almost all) wake up in the morning, pee in a nice porcelain toilet, on which we can sit comfortably if desired. We can then take a nice hot shower, brush our teeth with water that is mostly not contaminated with deadly bacteria (even if it is increasingly contaminated with harmful industrial and agricultural chemicals, and heavy metals), dry ourselves off with a nice fluffy towel, and get dressed.

So, to all of my fellow Americans, let’s remember to be grateful for the plumbing we have. We live in a country where almost everyone has a toilet in their living space. India has recently almost completed a national campaign to reach that goal, and apparently Nigeria is just starting to do something about the 4.7 million people without toilets.

Let’s be grateful, this Thanksgiving, for the basic things. Not just the food we all commonly say we are thankful for, but a place to put it when we’re done digesting it. And the fact that we don’t have to watch anyone else getting rid of theirs. And that it rarely ends back up in our drinking water.

Tarot Koans

THE MAJOR ARCANA

You may see the classical images for the Rider Waite deck at Wikipedia. Scroll down to Major Arcana. Arcana means secrets. The major arcana are meant to represent the entire human experience in an abbreviated, symbolic way.

Story Number 1: The Magician
After the thought, manifestation.

Story Number 2: The High Priestess
Before the thought, knowledge.

Story Number 3: The Empress
She glowed.
The fields flowered wherever she walked.
Bringing fruit out of season.

Story Number 4: The Emperor
His authority radiated from every pore.
He no longer required the uniform.

Story Number 5: The Heirophant
The attention rejuvenated his soul.
His sister had claimed it was his ego, but he knew better.
The eyes had followed his every move.
But now, he was tired of it all.
Performing the same rituals day after day.
Only the thoughtless cared.

Story Number 6: The Lovers
Loving lovers loved lengthily.
Do you remember?
Always remember.
Remember.

Story Number 7: The Chariot
Your chariot awaits.
The work you have done has its own reward.
Enjoy the ride.

Story Number 8: Strength
The Goddess radiated light.
The lion lay down in submission.
Truth and goodness flood the thought field.
Justice has become mercy.

Story Number 9: The Hermit
The old woman closed the door of her house behind her, and latched it.
Her cloak fastened at the neck, she headed up the mountain, holding nothing but a lantern.
She would go up as far as she could. She knew how to put one foot in front of the other. She knew how to struggle toward the heavens. She had done it all of her life.
There, she would breathe her last. Her knees would never let her return to lower earth, and that was just fine with her.

Story Number 10: The Wheel of Fortune
The monkey raced around the mulberry bush.
So did the weasel.
Which was chasing which?

Story Number 11: Justice
Jane bowed her head. Justice was slow in coming. Very slow.
A thousand times now, the sun had risen and set.
Jane lifted her head. Now she understood.

Story Number 12: The Hanged Man
Everything is upside down now.
The hummingbird has consumed the eagle. Ganesh rides a mouse.
Mist obscures the ground,
above the hard black bowl of the sky.

Story Number 13: Death
Ring around the rosie,
pocket full of posie.
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

Story Number 14: Temperance
Silver wings fluttering in the breeze,
the angel plodded on,
toward the approaching dawn.

Story Number 15: The Devil
The image stared back at him
from the depths of the blackness.
The sin looked out at the sinner.

Story Number 16: The Tower
Ground shaking, tower leaning.
Maybe this was not such a good idea.
We’d better jump now.

Story Number 17: The Star
She dipped her big right toe in
the river of time, while chewing
a blade of grass.

Story Number 18: The Moon
Over and over and over again, they had endured the
reign of terror.
Once, the wings of mercy had shielded them.
What goes around comes around.
The moon waxes and wanes.

Story Number 19: The Sun
Bright shining as the sun, the child’s smile.
Crickets start to chirp in the heat.

Story Number 20: Judgement
Dem bones gonna rise again, Ezekiel eventually proclaimed.
But is that really what you want?
The streets of heaven are paved with gold.
The alchemists’ stuff, not the end result of
two neutron stars colliding in
far away galaxies.

Story Number 21: The World
No longer at my fingertips.
Where are my fingertips?
Who am I?
What is I?
Boundaries dissolve.
The world is.
Is.
Isness.
Isness is.

A Story: The Master
I watch the lord comb the lady’s hair.
The rest is untold.

Story Number Zero: The Fool
Innocence and isness
make no claims.

I hope you liked these little poetic reflections. If you have an artistic bent, and would like to collaborate on illustrations, please let me know by the comment feature.

Osho and Patanjali

I have read Osho’s book about Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras probably around four times now. It’s called The Science of the Soul. A lot of real and metaphorical ink has been spilled over the Yoga Sutras. Osho says that Patanjali was the Einstein of the spiritual path. Yet today, scholars dispute the time of his life by plus of minus 500 years! (400 BCE to 600 CE). Patanjali, as I see him, lies squarely in the river of the thought of the sages of the Indian culture.

They were so logical. They did not have all of the different developed modern scientific tools of epistemological analysis, so they were limited in what they could achieve, and sometimes mistaken about what was natural law versus cultural habit, but many of the areas where they turned their gaze were revealed in a way that increased accessibility for whole new groups of people.

For example, our alphabet, based on the one supposedly developed by the Phoenicians, has a random order. The Devanagiri script, descendent of that used for Sanscrit, is completely logically ordered. The first letter is the one whose sound is furthest back in the throat, and it moves forward from there.

Patanjali, like the modern scientists of the mind, used introspection as his main tool to create his science of liberation. Despite the work of Freud, Jung, Adler and their colleagues and professional descendants, Western culture has no communally shared answers to the big questions and problems of personal loss. Patanjali however, in the spirit of the Rishis of the earliest Vedic culture (1500 – 500 BCE) gave simple instruction on how to attain liberation from the feelings of loss and failure that accompany most thoughtful people who are subject to the human condition.

The instructions, Patanjali noted in his first sentence, are not for everyone. Osho says that Patanjali acknowledged that if you were not completely fed up with your mental state, completely devoid of hope that things would ever improve, you would not likely be interested in his method of liberation. I reached this state, or at least close enough to think that I know what it means, about a year ago. That’s why I keep rereading Osho’s book, and have also sought out other commentators on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.

So, once you come to terms with the fact that you don’t have and never will have hope for peace of mind by any method based on logic, science, psychology, love, or money, open the Yoga Sutras. There you will read: Now, the discipline of yoga.

Grr. Discipline. I have never had any. People think I do, but I don’t. Or at least I never did. The arthritis attack forced me to get a little. I actually make my bed now, almost every day. Why not? I’m going to have to straighten the blankets before I lie down to sleep. Why not just do it in the morning? That’s discipline for it’s own sake. I live alone, so it’s very rare that anyone will see my messy bed. This, believe it or not, is a huge step forward in my personal practice of discipline.

Now, the discipline of yoga. Osho says that you have to have basic discipline in your life, eating and sleeping at regular times, or you will never get anywhere with your yoga practice. OK. Again, the arthritis forced me to change some of my ways.

I’m certainly not disciplined in any complete sense. If I were, my Failure Analysis book would be much further along than it is. Oh well. Maybe as I study and meditate more and more times on the second sutra, I will want more discipline so that I can proceed along the path to liberation from my own permanently troubled mind. The second sutra? Yoga is the cessation of mind.

This has always been problematic. The mind is kindof necessary, like the ego, to get through life. So what does this really mean? My current understanding is that it means that the mind, and ego for that matter, get demoted to servant, so that the true self can be the master.

The rest of Patanjali’s masterpiece is about how to make that happen. The bottom line is that we move our sense of who we are from our feelings, thoughts, and sensory input to the witness, the seer, the personal soul whose real existence is embedded in and inseparable from the consciousness of the eternal divine essence.

A Voice from The Grave

A voice from the grave. That’s the origin of all religion, according to Sir Edward Burnett Tylor, the man credited with starting the modern science of anthropology. Specifically, Tylor speculated that religion, as distinct from totems and their associated specific dietary taboos, arose when peoples ran into major difficulties or obstacles, and became open to listening to advice from respected lost elders currently residing in spiritual domains. The disembodied voices of dead ancestors were the original gods.

Of course in Asia, many still worship their ancestors. That’s part of why the Ten Commandments conveyed to a small group in the Sinai Peninsula should still, today, be considered revolutionary. The Ten Commandments instructed “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.”

We, the descendants, culturally if not from the specific haplo group, were told to HONOR, not to worship. It was intended to be a liberating commandment.

And, the reasoning was provided. Now, we may ask how honoring our PARENTS equates with long life for the ones doing the honoring, as opposed to the ones being honored. To answer this conundrum, we need only realize that as we live, we set an example. If we honor our parents, our offspring, or other people’s offspring, will see us doing so. If the entire community honors their parents, that will be the way life proceeds in that community. Then, the children will learn to honor their parents. They won’t even need the commandment.

Many people think that the reasoning is stating a different reality. A carrot and stick type approach. That God is sitting up in the sky counting the times we honor our parents, and adding days to our life in proportion. No. That’s not how it works.

The Fifth Commandment is a simple commandment followed by a statement of the consequences of the natural laws of human behavior. We learn by example.

That is the major reason why social change takes so long. That’s part of why the Pound Me Too movement is evoking a backlash, as innocent and thoughtless people alike are surprised that someone is trying to overturn the oldest rule of all, and not even in a single generation. In a single week, it seems, we’re seeing many question the millennia long truth that power and wealth are the ticket to doing whatever one likes. Within a week, it seems, the Pound Me Tooers claimed that every human has been cleared of all their subconscious conflicts that broadcast yes or maybe when the voice says no.

This is being followed in the national conversation by teenage girls claiming the right to go to school mostly naked, and claim it’s for their comfort, and that those who find their uncoverings sexually inviting need to ignore their bodily promptings. I really don’t see how this is going to end well. Unless the new generation has truly evolved to something other than Homo Sapiens.

Or How to SEE the world

Seriously folks, click on the underlined Charity Navigator link above in the yellow box. Thank you.