I Had A Dream

I don't know, I guess that's a dream common to humanity, to find a deep and caring love. I may never be with anyone who is such in this lifetime. I have thought I met her many times but she has slipped away,leaving me alone, each one of them. Life itself is the unfoldment of perfection. My vision must be flawed because I am not satisfied. You are beautiful, a vision, fading, as I am. Freedom, real freedom is a crazy dream. Everything that one cherishes in this life seems to be another trap for "mara" to throw at one to kind of say "see how you are missing out on life" and watch us chase the bait. Watch us go through our head trips and heart trips...wanting. The yogic idea is to simply accept things that come our way, not to avoid those happinesses that come our way but not to chase them, and to face head on the suffering in our lives and to solve the underlying problem, which is a craving for pleasure that is actually just a reinforcement of our ego to our ego. This is something that kicks me around over and over again and when I think I get the point something new gets me chasing the bait again, ultimately to get clobbered again. I have given up on getting much in the way of compensation for the things I do. Sure I still want to live the "American Dream," get filthy rich, pin down a girl and raise a million brats. But life takes us where it wants us to go. Our only control is our awareness and control of our attitudes. It is enough to generate positive attitudes to our situatiins and gratitude at the possibility of change.

NNNNObodies fault but mine.!

How many people here have been mad at something someone else has done but you yourself had been an "enabler"? I will give you an example. I recently loaned a friend some money. When the agreed on time to pay it back had been reached I did ask about it. The short story is that I may never see my money again. I was kind of pissed at the other whom I had lent the money to and that they are just going to walk on the loan. And I started thinking and the answer I found was not that THEY were at fault, but that I had not assumed responsibility for making the loan. I first looked at it that I had been duped once again by a friend with a hard luck and need story. I empathized with their story and knew that the need was real. But was angry I had bitten on the part where they promised to pay back and now would not. But really, to make it short and sweet, I loanded my friend money, and I did so with out thought that I may never see that money again. I assumed the other party was a scout and scout's honor would pay me back. And I am sure my friend would indeed pay me back if they had it but they are poor people like I am and do not have the money to pay it back. I realized that when I loan someone money that I assume the risk that it will not be repaid. If I do anything for friend or foe, I am taking a risk. And I have to assume in my calculations and reflections on wherher I do this or that, that I risk that I may be on the totally loosing side of the equation and that I have to understand that, I am taking a risk. Me , no body else, is taking the risk. And until that time when I see that money back in my hand, I am the one that make the decision to make the loan. I am the one that made the loan and that I am the one that is the ultimate guarantor of such a loan, and should consider it charity until it is paid back. And I should remember to give charity with a generous heart. Of course money is the earthbound universal constant. Everybody talks about money but money here is a metaphor for any risk taking behavior. I am in love with a lady now, for instance, who has had my putative child. No matter whose responsibility it was that the child was conceived and that she married a third party, I am on the outs with her and have been unable to access the child, we did do the "wild thing" and there is a child. I can be angry and upset but I cannot blame my part in the interaction, where it was an interaction, on her. I was not bound and forcibly made to ejaculate, I chose to do so. She was my desire and so was the child. That it stands as it stands for the time being is also my responsibility, what I do in response to this is MY responsibility, and how it works out, was a product of taking any such inceptive step to resolve the situation, in short my responsiblility. So in conclusion may it be said that to the extent possible, we ourselves are in control of our decisions and actions and when our decisions go wrong in the aftermath we have to consider that we ourselves were primarily responsible for our decisions. We cannot blame others.

Is Happiness What We Want?

I was observing the conditions on a psychiatric ward where the emphasis was NA and AA oriented treatment. I made a remark to the chief psychiatrist on that ward that these people were not getting better, and that is the difference between Asian and Western psychology. Asian psychology aims at making people happy. Western psychology thinks it is good to be miserable and bear it in sobriety. Why are we here, on this planet, in this life, in this time and our particular place and stations in life? Is it only to suffer and bear the pain? Is it solely to reproduce and get old and die? When we say we are "clean and sober" are we really, when we have personalities as undistinguished, flat, fragile and limited as a cardboard box, and we are a little pissed at everyone, a little hateful of life and very self seeking? How can anyone be satisfied in such a condition? Is the purpose of life to become more uncaring? Really? When we say life is for learning, what is it that we are learning? Knowledge does make you more free. Freedom builds happiness, and happiness is the true meaning and true lesson we all need to learn.

The Makings of Ignorance

To try not to think things is self defeating. When we push our thought away, mainly because if ramifies on our self image of who we are or what we should be according to popular standard, we are disowning ourselves in bits and pieces. We are living in denial of who we really are. When these ugly or unconventional sides of our person arise, instead of trying to push them away, we have to try toexamine them calmly for their emotional content. The problems with a crude pushing back are that these things still arise but they arise as unconscious behaviors that could get one into serious social, and, or, psychological trouble. Accepting oneself is to accept oneself whole and admit at least to oneself that everything is not so peachy. There in lives then the possibility and fact of growth.

Why Soma Ritual?

Someone put forth the assertion that "Soma Ritual" fell into disuse in yoga because the yogis found that it was possible to achieve complete emancipation without soma.

I say nonsense. If soma ritual disappeared then it was that it went underground because it is so easy to abuse intoxicants.
The following is my response to the author of the post's assertions: (I do not have permission and do not know it it would be cool if i published the author's original work.) :

I tend to somewhat disagree. Without speculating on the causes of the demise of the soma ritual, the soma ritual not only gives one pause to experience the bliss of samadi but also allows the practitioner to gain insight into the sources of the practitioner's tensions. Many people get "paranoia" when intoxicated with cannabis. One is led to believe that the source of the problem dwells in the taking of the intoxicant and that that fear is unreal. That fear is actually as real as your life. That fear is you knowing the imbalances of your life, on a more first hand basis. That fear is the reality of your karmic fate. It is not so pretty is it, perhaps? The experienced soma practitioner is able to not only use the samadi temporarily experienced in the soma induced state, but also the other portion of the experience can also be used, "what exactly are the problems and limitations that keep me from samadi?" And an experienced soma practitioner will be able to slowly take more control over his karmic trajectory and slowly uplift himself. (herself, just the same.) This does not abnegate the need to know other techniques, such as meditation. It is adjunctive to one's practice. When one is only chasing samadi through the use of intoxicants, one is hellbound for trouble. But the use of soma can be very beneficial. Might I also suggest that "soma" is a more or less generic name for intoxicants. That it is not really attached to any specific substance and it never was.

The Pointing Out Instructions To a Little Old Lady

These are called "The Pointing Out Instructions", as told by me.  These are not original ideas of mine but re-statement of the teaching of the Buddha and others more ancient than Guatama The Buddha.  These are ideas as old as philosophy and religion have existed.  For instance the Himilayan Hinduism of Shiva and Himilayan Buddhism have held these very teachings for about 9000 known years.

This is just the paradox of this life, from our side, the personal point of view, it is absolutely real. The suffering is real. The happiness is real. But if you want to dissect the experience of this life then all that can be said is that it is a play of consciousness. It is an arbitrary reality.

I want to go through the steps in discerning that this is so, that this is a play of consciousness and that any representational reality has an equal chance of existence. Firstly we look at ourselves and the world around us and each experiences a separate "MYSELF" that exists in this world. But what do we experience really? We experience a self surrounded by energies, like the energy that is the color of, lets say in this experience, the floor when you look at it. Whatever color you perceive. It should be pointed out that there is no ABSOLUTE color of the floor beneath my feet. In the light of the dawn and in the light of the lamps that light it at night, the color is approximately the same but definitely different if they were to be matched on paint chips. More over there are even changes due to shadowing, reflection, and even refraction. There is no fixed color but we still perceive "the floor". Not only that but the sensory channel that we perceive it with does not perceive the floor really, for instance the eye breaks down the form and color of the floor into its individual pixels of rod and cone nervous impulses and feeds them into the CNS, the CNS then SIMULATES "the floor" and we perceive these simulations. Now this is where I part with modern science. They say that IS "the floor" and it is, but it is experienced internally, by a consciousness, (Don't get me started on that.) by some simulation of self that is aware of what "the floor" means to oneself, ie do I walk on it into the next room, or do I be the "I" that sits in the chair typing while resting my feet on "the floor". Nevertheless it is experienced by an internal awareness. That awareness may not actually need to experience a "real floor", what the awareness needs to experience is a SIMULATION of "the floor" that is to that awareness, real. Therefore one can project a floor and share a commonality of experiencing a floor with beings who experience such similar projections, like my cat, who contrary to all belief, walks on the same "floor" as I do. As Chögyam Trungpa so aptly put it "Recognize this as your own projection." Does that make sense?