Samsara - or the other one

Jesus was a tantric, wasnt he?  Magdalene was a priestess, so the rumor goes...

In America, we can be buddhists, yogis, taoists, Christians, druids, and anything else we want to be all at the same time.  There are plenty of dogmas, but we are free to ignore them all.  This is category defiance.

Good riddance.

  We dont fit in categories.  Reality doesnt fit in categories, but cognition requires a self-reflexive syntax that does, so our thinking minds are perpetually categorizing the un-categorizable.  The syntax of cognition depends on the categories of either/or, but reality is both/and...

Spirituality or sexuality?  

Renunciation or gratification?

Heaven?  

Or... hell?

Religion is either/or,

Tantra is both/and...

Reality is paradoxical, so pondering 'why bad things happen to good people' leads us nowhere but headache-land.  There is some  "good" in the "bad" stuff,  and there is some "bad" in the "good" stuff... Because theyre just labels, not absolute values.  The labels are inherently empty...  just a temporary and temporal perspective, nothing more.

the map is not the territory, and language is just a map.  Language may approximate but cannot replicate truth...

(the Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao...)

Orthodox sages have concluded that the eternal is to be pursued, and the impermanent is to be shunned, for the impermanent leads to suffering. 

 Yet it could be said that this very either/or dichotomy leads to judgment and consequently craving/aversion/suffering...

...so the unorthodox viewpoint declares that the either/or dichotomy between the eternal and the impermanent is the true cause of suffering... and by embracing BOTH the eternal AND the impermanent - yang and yin, unity and diversity, father God and mother Nature, masculine and feminine, bliss and suffering, the Absolute and the relative, the in-breath and the out-breath, nirvana and samsara, form and emptiness - that we transcend dualistic opposites and experience union... 

So the heretodox movement, whether it be tantric, or daoist, or nazarite, is the attempt to weave two distinct polarities into a composite whole.

Or, as Shiva once told Parvati, "Every inbreath has its opposite, its dissolution.  Find the still point between them-"

Independence

If a social network successfully keeps itself from being gamed by advertisers, marketers, propaganda, and big brother, it will ultimately outperform government in the field of public service, won't it?  I am proposing that a healthy, decentralized, user-driven (rather than corporate/state driven) blockchain verified social network will eventually evolve inevitably into a cybernetic public service mutual fund, investing in the public good at optimum cost effectiveness.

Hear me out:  social networks are where people invest.  We are investing our ATTENTION via social networks.  And social networks are both democratic and meritocratic - everyone has a say, and the best ideas rise to the top.  Memes become viral through the operation of free-market principles - there is a high demand for good content and thus the supply of good content propagates virally.  

What is this 'good content'?  Good content comes in two categories:  The truth, and what makes people happy.  The market is driven by people's desire to be happy.  And even though the corporation/state is heavily invested in manipulating people into believing that more new shoes, more new clothes, more new cars, more new tvs,  more movies, more new wars, more new fears, and more new weapons to defeat more new enemies will give us happiness,  it is a very structurally unsound proposition requiring an exorbitant level of manipulation.   This is enormously cost prohibitive, and self-defeating in the long run.  And all that stuff didn't make us happy. 

In other words, the corporation/state is providing us with 'bad content' and telling us its 'good content', while at the same time doing everything it can to prevent authentic 'good content' from going viral - and yet good content is seeping into the public domain, where every attempt is made censor it.

And the censorship isn't working, just as free market economics predicts.  Where there is a demand, supply will inevitably arise.  We want to be entertained, and we want the truth too, even if it sucks.  As it becomes more and more obvious to everyone that government is ultimately what stands in the way of real peace and prosperity, because Empire requires slaves and war, we will no longer look to Empire to give us the peace and prosperity we so deeply desire and instead we will create it ourselves, using the internet, without Empire's consent or approval.  Economic prosperity is a natural consequence of a healthy and vibrant ecology, while the current paradigm is about as appealing as following a herd of lemmings off a cliff into lava.  Government has lost a critical mass of support, as the Deep State is unelected and unrepresentative.  In our hearts we have declared Independence, with precedent.  And so we turn to our ecologies for survival, as we always have-
Make gardening the centerpiece of public education.  That's sustainability.

Vipassana

Having recently spent a month sitting and serving at a vipassana center, which teaches the dharma of the Buddha in the tradition of S.N. Gunk, I have been asked to write a short piece explaining what I did it for, and what I got out of it.  I am happy to answer these questions, but before doing so I must acknowledge that less is more, and thus the fewer words I use, the more truthful I will be.  in this spirit, everything I could possibly convey in paragraphs and pages is best summed up in one sentence:

The teaching of the Buddha is profound.  Come, and see for yourself.

And having said this, which is really all there is to say, I will now say more, language being the map which describes (but is not equivalent to) truth.

I've heard it said that silence is golden, but who has ever experienced it?  We sit on a cushion, and the mind holds conversations with itself.  The mind is loud, and sometimes offensive, like a wild elephant pulling our attention away from the breath and the present moment.  With diligence and great discipline we pull our mind away from its addictions to past and future, placing it squarely back upon the breath, only to discover in the space of 1/100th of a second that whoops! its off again, on some tangent of passion or aggression, fantasy or regret.  If we are not the masters of our minds, then we are the slaves of our desires, which leads to the present day world of intercontinental aggression and unprecedented gluttony.

And as we see out in the macrocosm a world enslaved by desire, we discover the great impetus to remain on the cushion and master our minds, so that our minds do not master us.  We continue to sit, and observe with humble awe the insane chaos by which thought replaces thought, despite our best attempts to be thoughtless.  We discover with terrible chagrin the noise of our own inner workings, the incessant chatter of our minds.  The mind is a tv and we are sitting on the remote - the channels change too fast for us to even figure out what we are watching.

And there is no escape; there is no reprieve.  The hours and days stretch out interminably before us, we are not allowed to talk or even make eye contact, so the pressure builds.  We must retrain the habit pattern of the mind - there is no other way.

So again and again, moment after agonizing moment, we pull the mind away from its habitual patterns of craving and aversion and bring it back to the breath and the present moment, inhaling and exhaling.  And the moments stretch in to minutes, and the minutes stretch into hours, and the hours stretch into days, and ever so slowly, ever so tortuously, we retrain the habit pattern of the mind.

And eventually, long after we have lost hope, we stop listening to ourselves.  The mind still chatters, like the tv nobody ever turned off, but we are not watching it anymore, we are in a different room, and we can hear the tv but we are busy watching the breath.  The tv is broadcasting garbage, anyway, and the breath is very peaceful and calming.  We find that we prefer the breath to the incessant noise, and are grateful to be in the other room, far away, where the tv is easier to ignore.

Then a moment comes, when no one is looking, and the tv is no longer on.

We have died.  The ego has succumbed, and just for one moment, we experience a taste of freedom that leaves such a deep imprint on the psyche it is like chiseling into granite.  And of course, the ego resurfaces like a caged lion, roaring and waging war, but the silence cannot be undone, and we now know that we are not who we think we are, we are not thought at all, Descartes was wrong as wrong could be and the entire world is built on a great falsehood, and that thinking cannot ever lead us to truth.

To mix a metaphor of Chogyam Trungpa:
'I think, therefore I am,' is the dying gasp of the western sun,
while the dawning eastern sun proclaims,
'I think BECAUSE I am.'

Thinking is now seen to be the very problem it is meant to solve, for the mind cannot find peace:  Peace returns to letting go mind.

Thinking is suffering.  We yearn to be rid of it.  Meditation retreat has been referred to as 'the thinning of the 'me''.  We are pure beings, and thinking just gets in the way.

So.

After ten all-too-short days we resurface, and find ourselves too familiarly similar to who we were when we arrived, but something within us has changed, something beyond language, beyond thought.  Our personality is less fixed, it now has options.  The ego may try to remain master, and we may let it, but this ego has been forever humbled and will never again believe it itself the way it used to.

And so, out of gratitude for this transformation, we stay on the for the next course, and serve others, watching in awe as they slowly and quietly revert to the innocence of children, egoless, radiant, and innocent.  Then they, too, resurface, and don the accoutrements of their former personalities, trying hard to believe that it is the real 'them', and we commiserate, for it is our process too, and freedom from the habit patterns of the mind is a long journey.

But the map is not the territory, and this language you are reading is not the truth.

The teaching of the Buddha is profound.  Come, and see for yourself.

To find out more:  www.dhamma.org

Not with a bang but a whimper

So we are witnessing the controlled demolition of the U.S. Dollar by forces that are actually working in the interest in the public good.  Weird.

BRICS.  Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.  Russia and China had working-class revolutions, while India, Brazil, and South Africa dream of them.  Not exactly allies of the .01%, are they?

Yet solidarity is making them strong, stronger than the ruling class.  Global cooperation amongst the underprivileged is competing and winning against the ruthless competition of the ruling elite.   Which rigged the world to use U.S. Dollars.

You see, when you print the money, you a priori own everything money can buy.  Somebody named Rothschild said something to that effect once.  So the Federal Reserve, which is privately owned by banking elites who are rumored to not even be American, was able to wrest the right of money-printing away from the federal government (!) and consequently take over both our government and the process of globalization.

The globalized, however, haven't liked it very much and are doing something about it.  This is the BRICS bank, the AIIB, the global South, and Greece, now, too, officially after April 9th when they will probably join the Eurasion Union and sell Russan oil to Europe.

The U.S. Dollar has been propped up at the barrel of a gun - or rather, propped up by the weight of the U.S. military machine, which is itself propped up by the Military Industrial Complex.  This is not legal, by the way.  Waging war for corporate profit is an international war crime.  So when the U.S. Military Industrial Complex invaded Iraq and Libya, and tried to invade Syria, Ukraine, and Iran, its talking heads made sure to come up with legitimate excuses.    Which happened to be lies.  Which is not legal, by the way.

The attempt at propping up the U.S. Dollar is not succeeding.  Our bought and paid for government is  digging itself ever deeper into debt in its creation of a fascist Big Brother State in order to deter dissent, but big Brother is too expensive to maintain and the rest of the world doesn't want to be exploited anymore, and now has a big team of allies to fight the bully with.

The Federal Reserve owners are actually trying to create WWIII, if you can believe it.  Recall that the same banks financed both sides of WWI, WWII, and even the Napoleonic wars.  War is highly profitable for the Military Industrial Complex, remember?  So the banking class finances war, ravages the land and the infrastructure, overcomes truth with propaganda, and writes the history books.

Then along came the Internet...

The same banking class which has been investing in war, propaganda, and scarcity for eons is making the same attempt today, and domestically, in America, the millions of TV watchers have been sadly duped.  However, those millions of innocent and ignorant Americans make up a teeny percentage of the global population, and are far outweighed by the Internet savvy generation and the Global Family of All-Of-Us.  Thanks to our new (online) printing press, intelligence is overcoming ignorance.

Seriously.  the BRICS and the world do not want WWIII, because among other reasons in war it is always the poor who suffer most.  Wars have a tendency to centralize control in the hands of a few; the ruling elites.  War is good for oligarchy, bad for democracy.  The irony is that the many global losers have rallied the wagons and are now effectively fending off the attacks of the global 'winner' - the biggest bank of them all, the Central Bank of the West.

So we are witnessing the BRICS bank and their allies slowly and inexorably overcoming the hegemony of the U.S. Dollar without allowing war to erupt.  The avoidance of war and (ensuing chaos) that would inevitably sweep the world is making this transition much slower; agonizingly, slow, even.  But moving fast has a tendency to be destructive - how long does it take to grow a tree compared to chopping it down?  Creation is always more time consuming than destruction.

The dismantling of the corrupt U.S Dollar ponzi scheme will ultimately lead to the arrest of people who deliberately lied, stole, and murdered for profit - bankers, politicians, corporate executives, military leaders, and government bureaucrats.  But if these arrests happened today, the stock market would crash, pandemonium would ensue, martial law would be declared, and the ruling elites would pull the reins ever tighter.  We are witnessing the birth of a path to true peace.  Violent means always - ALWAYS - lead to violent ends, and consequently the birth of global peace must begin and evolve peacefully.

We cannot focus on the problem, but rather, on the solution.  Worrying about who is responsible for the U.S. Dollar ponzi scheme distracts us from the task at hand, which is replacing it.  And the U.S. Dollar is unquestionably being replaced, nonviolently.  Despite the best attempts of the Military Industrial Complex to go out with a bang, they are going out with a whimper.

What we are witnessing is nothing more and nothing less than a controlled demolition of the U.S. Dollar ponzi scheme.  Global financial infrastructure is being built all around the toxic U.S. Dollar that will prevent collateral damage from bringing ruin to the global economy.  It is almost as though a spider's web is being woven around the U.S. Dollar, made of Vietnamese dong, Russian rubles, Chinese Yuan, etc.  (it is of course worth noting that these three aforementioned currencies are all making efforts to back their currencies with gold.)  This spider's web will allow the Dollar to collapse safely, without global contagion.  The Police State will not be needed.  Yes, the stock market will crash, but it will be a relatively manageable crisis, with global leadership ready in the wings, solutions in the making.  Hemp is quietly being positioned to replace petroleum, state-run banks are quietly being positioned to replace TBTF monopolies, sovereign, state-owned central banks are quietly anticipating their exclusive money-printing prerogative, and Constitutional Republics patiently await the demise of the fascist Oligarchs.  Slowly, with agonizing slowness, the Military Industrial Complex watches as its swords are eyed for their worthiness as plowshares...

more to come

Green Party Platform

The political platform that will harness the voting power of the public will have five main tenets:

1 - gardening as the centerpiece of public education

2 - the legalization of industrial hemp as the centerpiece of ecological and economic rehabilitation

3 - the abolition of the privately owned and falsely named Federal Reserve, and the return to
     Constitutional currency

4 - Scientific research and development in the newly burgeoning science of meditation.

5 - elected government representatives devoting 1/3 of their time in office managing soup kitchens in
     their districts

Gandhi once said, 'first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.'

By this measurement, the number of people ignoring my website is surely a good sign...

(  But all these processes are irrevocably taking place without anyone noticing)