Posts tagged "thoughts-dreams":

"Do you believe in God?"

Sometimes there is a problem with the way that questions are asked. Those are the questions to which our response is sure to get someone upset. Perhaps they should not be asked? Perhaps they need to be asked differently?

The meaning of purpose; the purpose of meaning

Purpose or lack of purpose is something that exists in the human plane. To escape suffering that is caused by war, famine, climate change, a person risks his life with the purpose of reaching a better place. Purposes relate to cause and effect; to agency. A subject acts and an object receives the action. By virtue of our lived experience, we interpret the universe in terms of separation; we see causes and effects and we look for purpose. If we find it, we decide that there is meaning to our lives, to the universe. If we do not find it, we may decide to believe in a supernatural or an unknowable purpose: "mysterious are the ways of God…" Or contrarily, we decide that there is no purpose, neither meaning. It's all a blank.

A good citizen; hamsin; musical performance

Being a good citizen of the 21st century requires knowledge and awareness so that we can make good decisions on an individual level, about what products to buy, what to do and what not to do.

Our truth and our persona

Are we just who we think we are, or do we always represent something - some group; some nation; some identity? There are things we would like to say, but then we remember that as a "privileged white male" or as a citizen of a former colonial power, or something else, it is probably better to keep our mouths shut. That's what I'm reflecting on now, with regard to that Israeli film director who raised a furor at the Goa film festival (see my previous post). What he said, regarding the "vulgarity" of the film ("The Kashmir Files") may (or may not) be true. On the other hand, if one is a foreigner and, on top of that, speaking about a highly sensitive issue - well, maybe there are places you might not want to go.

Diary; thoughts of the day

Spent some time reading through my fediverse stream and catching up on various kinds of terminology, gender relationships, human relationships… Sometimes it seems like I've been hiding in a cave all these years… words like swerf and terf were new to me, and what's harder, understanding them often requires going more deeply into what people say about them, and then trying to make an evaluation. Then I learned, also from my stream, about Glenn Greenwald's mutual embrace with right-wing media, and the acrimony between him and Micah lee and others. Again, hiding in a cave.

On daylight-saving time

Twice a year, there are lots of comments in social media about the stupidity of daylight savings time. Israel has DST too, and keeps in step with Europe and North America with regard to the date of the change-over. But many nations, like India and China, don't bother with DST. Those two huge nations also impose a single time zone from east to west, regardless of the inconvenience it must cause to areas distant from the capital.

Walks, thoughts

It being the eve of the Day of Atonement, when the roads become quiet and the sounds of nature come to the forefront, I enjoyed my afternoon walk through the woods and fields, without the distant roar of traffic.

Free speech

PayPal Demonetises the Daily Sceptic

Salman Rushdie

I read about the attempt on the author's life and his wounding in the attack. I've read only one of his books - Shalimar the Clown, and a couple of short stories, which I enjoyed. Satanic Verses I once tried to read, but it didn't hold my interest. I find something irritatingly affected about the man that keeps me at a distance. Maybe more than other authors, his personality seems to infuse itself into the writing. But my judgment is only cursory - I can't really claim to understand Rushdie from reading one novel and listening to a few interviews. And it's just a personal bias. Still, I obviously know him better than his would-be assassin - I suppose religion was the motivating factor and Rushdie was just a symbolic target. What an idiot, what a presumption, by an ignorant 24-year old, to harm one of the great writers of our era.

Animals

There are two or three cats that pass at every hour by the pateo screen door, on what look like regular patrols. Their pace is unhurried, as if they have all the time in the world. If the door is open behind the screen, they take a moment or two to peer in; no doubt if they could enter they would do so. I don't want to discourage their patrols. One day on the path we found a dead snake; perhaps that was their doing.

Journal

Last night I was reading through the archives of their semi-internal weekly news sheet "News and Notes", and I see that the township is still in turmoil; a situation that seemed to start at the end of last year when the new Secretary tried to roll over all objections to complete the Crown Road project.

2022-4-26 - olives, loquats | dealing with complexity | web fonts

The olives are in bloom, meaning many people will have allergies. It looks like there are many flowers this year: does that mean there will be many fruits? (Olives are famously biennial bearing).

2022-04-25 - bookmarking | music | dream

I haven't completely given up on Hubzilla bookmarks, because it is so easy to drop them in through the bookmarklet. So now I have two parallel systems of dealing with links, each fighting to assert its supremacy.

2022-04-14 Collective fantasies

I've been thinking that, considering the unreality of the world, or worlds, that we inhabit, it may be more intelligent to spend as little as possible time with what seems to be “the hard reality”. Children, when they are given the freedom to be somewhat detached from a need to earn a living or take an active part in their parents' world, grow wings. They have the ability to dream, to engage in fantasies of their own making. We all think that this is wonderful. Yet, when children “grow up” they are gradually expected to conform to the hard realities of the adult world, where engaging in fantasy is excoriated and shunned. Collective fantasies especially are reviled, such as QAnon, by people who are not part of that, and vice-versa. Half of society is accusing the other half of engaging in fantasy, and there are sub-groups and cults: political and spiritual.

2021-11-27 - Distraction

Distraction is considered in a negative way by those who are "serious". The "serious" are those who embark upon a career, would-be absolute rulers, sadhakas and mumukshutwis, and all others who are taking the steep path up the mountain.

Reality

Up at sunrise again. Actually I was up twice in the night too, so my days and nights are similar periods of rest and wakefulness. I'm still reading "The Earth of the New Sun", and am enjoying Wolf's conception of a universe where space and time and creatures inhabiting these worlds are highly flexible, and tend to flow into each other. Genders, strange creatures, androids, all are in a fluid mix. I could well imagine a similar combining of time periods in our own world, where wisdom from past times augments the knowledge of the present, with intimations from the future. This is very much the universe of science fiction writers, an embracing of all that is possible, and a refusal to reject anything outright.

happiness

Flight to Tel Aviv: I have been reading Sapiens, and reached almost the of the book now. I have just finished reading his discussion of happiness; in which he writes particularly of the Buddhist understanding of the concept. It is close to the one I find in Yoga philosophy, though I would phrase it differently. I think that happiness is the state normally found when consciousness rests in the present moment and is not in a condition of resistance to it. In other words, the mind is at peace. In a moment that we are caught off-guard by beauty, such as when one opens the curtains to behold a golden sunrise, the mind is "enraptured", if only for a moment, perhaps. Something comes between our thoughts of the past, our memories, regrets; and our plans hopes and desires for the future, so that we know peace, for a fleeting moment.

Journal

Finishing up my time here in the US. I think I will miss the quietude of being at home alone, and will not enjoy the bustle of being in a full household again. Coronavirus cases are sky-rocketing in Israel again, so I won't want to go out even after the period of home-isolation. I think I just want to live the rest of my life in quiet places; Neve Shalom or Auroville. There isn't much on offer outside of solitude. It's true that I need to keep my body more active, so that it doesn't grow weak and inflexible, but there are solutions for that.

Journal

I was reading in the Guardian a story about failed art restorations; a statue of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus, in which the infant was restored to a kind of monkey; a similar painting of Christ in which he comes out looking like a plump gremlin; and finally a tower in Istanbul that, according to social media, resembles a giant Sponge Bob. I actually don't know about the character of Sponge Bob, but this had me doubling over in laughter anyway.

Journal

What I have to admit, from the beginning, is that I know nothing, and yet I know too much. I know nothing, on the basis that I’m poorly read. I have read little of the great western philosophers. But also because the state of our knowledge, in the first quarter of the 21st century, is also very poor, compared to what it will be fifty or a hundred years later. On the basis of what we knew, in the 20th century, we have committed terrible errors and vicious crimes against humanity. On the basis of what we currently know, it is clear that we are destroying our biosphere.

Looking through my father's photo albums

There's something inexpressibly sad about looking through these old albums. My father, as he grew older, no longer looked at them. Most of the people there were already dead - he had simply outlived them all. And now I have outlived my father. But that is not the reason I find it sad. It's more because seeing these images, many of them representing “peak" moments in life like weddings, vacations, and time spent with children, can make the whole of life seem pointless. It's true, of course, that the memories thus enshrined, the majority of them, were not my own. But recently Dorit sent photos of me with my children and I felt something similar. It was as if the persons there - my children and me - were of someone else. I hardly recognized them. Who was that person?

Foreign workers

“Foreign workers are particularly vulnerable, with a weaker support network and language barriers that prevent them from seeking government help…”

Reality versus our vision of it

So I was thinking that spiritual teachers so often see a version of reality that corresponds with their natures. Describing reality in one manner inevitably leads to the disparagement of alternative ways of describing it, which seem to have a different or opposite vision. It is not so different from the flaw in our everyday vision, according to which we define objects by their function or usefulness to us. In many languages gold or silver have come to mean “money”, while our word “salary” indicates a measure of salt.

False views

The universe was never created. Matter, energy and consciousness are one. There is no center, no periphery, no end to time and space. Seeing is interpretation. All statements about ultimate truth, including this one, are a lie. There are multiple ways to apprehend reality But not taking into account the error of our seeing, and not glimpsing the unity in the diversity, Leads us astray.