Relaxed Focus

Training.

2012-05-22T15:19:00.000Z

5/22 - 60m grappling/wrestling/jiu jitsu - P90X 37 Cardio X [subbed in for Plyometrics] - bonus *Idranktoomuchlastnightandwillagaintonightpunishmyselfworkout* DB DL, DB Rows, HyperX, Pullups

5/21 - P90X 36 Back & Biceps, Abs

5/20 - P90X 35 rest/off

5/19 - P90X 34 Kenpo X [modified w/B.O.B.]

5/18 - P90X 33 Legs & Back

Never too old, never too late, never give up.

Cooking/Food Log.

2012-05-22T15:11:00.003Z

5/14 - coffee w/milk & Splenda, protein shake, tuna & mayo, turkey bacon
5/15 - coffee w/milk & Splenda, protein shake, water, steak
5/16 - coffee w/milk & Splenda, protein shake, steak, lobster thermidor, french fries, rum & Diet Coke
5/17 - coffee w/cream & Splenda, cheese, mayo, eggs, avocado & salsa, Diet Coke
5/18 - coffee w/cream & Splenda, protein shake, hot dogs & mayo, cream cheese, guacamole, water
5/19 - coffee w/cream & Splenda, Starbucks Frap, water, Diet Coke, chips, candy, cake, cookies, milk, cheese
5/20 - coffee w/cream & Splenda, omelette, shrimp cocktail, beer, chicken, rum, Coke

The wife gets sandwiches because she asks for sandwiches.

The very definition of painfully funny.

2012-05-19T08:30:00.000Z

I wanna party with this dude.

2012-05-18T16:03:00.004Z

Religious Roundup.

2012-05-18T16:00:00.000Z

"You are always making up the future as you go."

2012-05-18T15:49:00.003Z

Wrong, but funny.

2012-05-17T21:14:00.000Z

And having grown up in a Marine town, and having done my own 5 years in - it's also not entirely inaccurate.

Training.

2012-05-17T21:03:00.000Z

5/17 - P90X 32 Yoga X

5/16 - P90X 31 Back & Biceps, Abs

Bodybuilding.com - Body Transformation: Strength To Stand Tall:

Training.

2012-05-15T21:17:00.000Z

5/15 - P90X 30 Plyometrics

Meet Staci: Your New Powerlifting Super Hero | Nerd Fitness:

Training.

2012-05-14T17:56:00.002Z

5/14 - P90X 29 Chest, Shoulder, Tris & Abs

Odd, in that working out on vacation early last week was relatively simple, but coming back to Liberia on Thursday AM led to a 4 day abortion of poor food choices/lack of exercise. So we're gonna have Sherman set the WABAC machine for last Monday and travel back in time to redo last week's P90X. Takes the wiggle room out of the last two months, but that's how that goes. Onwards.

Awesome progress/results. I must work harder.

Condescending Wonka has your number.

2012-05-14T13:11:00.000Z

Meme time, ya'll.

"Be grateful everyday for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides."

2012-05-13T13:00:00.003Z

True Story/Take the Red Pill.

2012-05-13T12:52:00.000Z

Carlin/Hicks 2012.

2012-05-12T11:40:00.002Z

Truth.

"It's all fun and games until someone loses an ego."

2012-05-12T11:35:00.002Z

Mark Morford: How to end it once and for all | Full Page:

"...Here is my dedicated and powerful yoga student. She is also going through a massive transition, a real dark night of the soul, questioning everything she thought she knew and exploding nearly all of it, as she lets her former identity slough away like rusted armor. It's a complete spiritual/career/perspective overhaul of who she is and what she wants to do in this life, which all sounds wonderful and healthy and positive, were it not for the headaches and the sleepless nights and the screaming.

As we say in the deeper yoga practice: it's all fun and games until someone loses an ego.

...something in her ego kept her nailed to the emotional floor, stuck like a pinned bug, her body endlessly sick and heart endlessly drained, always looking backwards, re-living stale memories, staring at photos of a life she built but never fully lived in.

You know that feeling? Or something very similar? Oh, I bet you do.

But recently, a shift. A wink of possibility, some forward momentum after far too many years of immobility, ill health and inertia. Someone swept into her life allowing for a fresh blast of why the hell not, of let's get this thing moving. I'm not exactly sure she quite sees it that way, but I sure do.

Here is the question: Is it possible? Are my friends ready? Or will their egos and stories, past patterns and melodramas trap them in an ever-recurring web of lies and bulls--t and suffering? Will yours? Will mine? On a day to day basis, is this not the only real question worth asking?

...Do we stay addicted to our patterns and our former selves, or do we harness the difficult opportunities when we see them, when the chance for change swims into view, knowing they won't wait around for long, knowing, deep down, that if we ignore them the energy will stagnate and congeal into fear and fat, misery and fundamentalist Republican Christianity, never to have hot sex again? There is one thing we know.

There is one thing shared across all traditions and religions, spiritualities and yoga paths, status quos and opportunities for change.

It is ritual. The marker. The sign of movement. You get baptized. You get the bat mitzvah. You perform the hardcore tribal thing with the face paint and the fire and the lions. You drop the hallucinogens and wander for 30 days in the jungle, communing with the specters of the gods. Hey, whatever works.

...Offer something to your gods. Tear up that old iPhoto library. Go on a cleanse. Wander oceanside, write yourself a mantra, repeat it 108 times, then tear it up and toss it to the waves, into the fire, into the compost pile. Swipe your hand across your heart, your crotch, your eyes, anywhere energy cords attach and suck the goddamn life force out of you. Purge. Cleanse. Burn. Ignite anew. What, too hippie? Too New Agey? I don't mind. Neither will your gods."

Terence McKenna speaks wise.

2012-05-11T20:58:00.001Z

"Life is... a game, a gamble, a multiple-choice Intelligence Test."

2012-05-11T20:52:00.002Z

RAWIllumination.net: The Compleat Skeptic by RAW:

"Hume pointed out that all we can know (directly) is a stream of sensations. Even the hypothesis that there is a block-like entity, the Ego or "me," observing or experiencing this stream of sensations, is inferential, not directly known. Every philosopher since Hume has tried to refute this, not very successfully, because it happens to be true... Yes: this is truth: the stream of sensations is all that is given directly. All else is inference. But is this all of the truth? Does skepticism lead directly to solipsism? Not quite. There is an old Zen story which is worth recalling at this point in our argument. A monk, after long meditation, perceived the facts noted above. In great excitement, he rushed to tell his roshi (Zen teacher), "I have it! I have it! That rock there is inside my head!" "You must have a very big head," said the Teacher, "to hold a rock that size."

...all we know directly is a stream of sensations. The theories that there is an "ego" experiencing this stream, and an "outside" world provoking it, are inferential, unproven and (if we are strict about applying Occam's principle of parsimony) should be rejected as illegitimate.

...Zen teachers, when they recognize that a student has arrived at this womb-like solipsistic stage, hit him, with a wooden staff, hard, on the right shoulder, which sends most striking sensations to damned near every nerve in the body.

After such Shock Therapy, one does not return to the naive objectivity of the ordinary fool or the Randroid. One realizes that there is some sort of Self (although everything one has learned about it is probably false) and some sort of Objective Reality (although everything one has learned about it is also probably false.)

One realizes that life is not a tragedy (as pessimists claim) or a comedy (as optimists assert) or a kind of Moral police court (as theologians would have it) but rather more in the nature of a game, a gamble, a multiple-choice Intelligence Test."

May. Morocco. Misadventures.

2012-05-11T20:41:00.001Z

3 cities [Rabat, Fes & Casablanca] in 7 days. More pics here.

Religion Roundup.

2012-05-11T20:27:00.000Z

North Carolina Dumfuckery.

2012-05-11T20:10:00.000Z

Ask me again if I miss living in the States.

Training.

2012-05-11T13:38:00.001Z

5/10&11 - P90X 32&33 [missed wkouts]

5/9 - P90X 31 rest/off

5/8 - P90X 30 Chest, Shoulders, Tris

5/7 - P90X 29 Back & Biceps, Abs

5/6 - P90X 28 rest/off

5/5 - P90X 27 substituted X Stretch for Yoga X

5/4 - P90X 26 Core Synergistics

5/3 - P90X 25 X Stretch

5/2 - P90X 24 Kenpo X - 60m grappling/jiu jitsu

Cooking/Food Log.

2012-05-11T13:33:00.000Z

Starting with the usual and then... vacation in Morocco.

4/30 - coffee, protein shake x2, egg & cheese omelette, water
5/1 - coffee, protein shake, water, chicken, beer, coffee w/milk & sugar x2
5/2 - coffee w/milk & sugar x3, paleokit, brownie, water, quesadilla, Sprite
5/3 - water, jerky, tajine, cafe au lait, coke zero, chocolate, scotch
5/4 - water, Coke Zero, chocolate, olives, guacamole, steak, cauliflower, mixed veggies, beer, rum &Coke
5/5 - Coke Zero, western omelette, cafe creme w/sugar, pigeon pie, salad, bread, near beer, Berber coffee, beer, salad, bread, beef skewers, banana, strawberries, coffee w/sugar
5/6 - bread & butter, coffee w/sugar, mint tea & candy, soup, salad, bread, tajine, dessert, cafe creme, chocolate pastry, Coke Zero, chocolate, pizza, beer, stromboli
5/7 - coffee w/sugar & milk, water, pizza, beer, stromboli, chocolate, Coke Zero, McDonald's burgers & fries, scotch
5/8 - coffee w/sugar & milk x2, coconut water x3, chocolate, Coke Zero, chocolate pastry, chicken, burrito, beer, fajitas, quesadilla
5/9 - coffee w/milk & sugar, bread & butter, burger, fries, beer, chocolate ice cream, chicken, potatoes, bread, butter

Training.

2012-05-02T01:26:00.001Z

5/1 - new PR chinups 25, pullups 22. Dead hang, no kipping. There was a *little* bit of body English on the last rep of each attempt, but we're still counting 'em. New goal for mid-July = 30/25 - P90X 23 Core Synergistics

4/30 - P90X 22 Yoga X - PruFit 3 metabolic rounds [run/pushup/mountain climbers, run/boat/situps, run/suicides/wall squat]

Motivating six pack.

Reading - February through April.

2012-05-01T15:17:00.001Z

Last three months - 12 books & some comics...

Culture Shock! Thailand - A Guide to Customs and Etiquette by Robert & Nanthapa Cooper. Starting to get spun up on the wife's next post. Comprehensive, if somewhat dated [looks like it's out of print these days.] A good primer on the basics of understanding Thai culture.

Mr. America: How Muscular Millionaire Bernarr Macfadden Transformed the Nation Through Sex, Salad, and the Ultimate Starvation Diet by Mark Adams. Pretty fascinating look at one of the first health and fitness gurus in American history.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Mixed feelings on this one. Which goes to show, as normal, I'm not wired as most everyone on the planet who has read and loved this book. I found it alternating between very powerful and evocative transposed with repetitive and meandering. Also, I don't think I handle father/son stuff particularly well these days.

Superheroes and Philosophy: Truth, Justice and the Socratic Way [Popular Culture and Philosophy Series] by Various. Like any collection of essays, hit and miss. Fun geek reading, though.

A Feast Unknown by Jose Philip Farmer. A classic homage/satire to the pulp novels of the 20th century, featuring facsimile renditions of Tarzan and Doc Savage. Filled with violence, intrigue and just a touch of the crazy.

THE EYE OF REVELATION: The Ancient Tibetan Rites of Rejuvenation by Peter Kelder (Author), J. W. Watt (Editor.) Part real life Shangri La tale, part exercise routine. Bonus points for not only reprinting the classic original text, but delving into the possible real life history behind it.

Still Life with Crows (Pendergast, Book 4) by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child. The Pendergast novels are always diverting, fun reads. Featuring a psuedo-Sherlock Holmes in Agent Pendergast, good thriller/mystery. More character than plot, but worth reading during an afternoon at the pool or the beach. If you like your beach reading to feature gruesome murders, that is.

Confession of a Buddhist Atheist by Stephen Batchelor. Awesome account of one man's travel through the world of Buddhism and the meaning of it all. Excerpts below. Highly recommended if you've the slightest inclination to this kind of thing.

The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower by Robert Baer. Baer is former CIA, the guy who served as the inspiration for the George Clooney character in Syriana. Here he wades through the polemics, propaganda and misunderstandings of Iran to present a dispassionate and well rounded set of ideas for the US, and the world, to embrace in dealing with Iran. Really good book. Excerpts below.

God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales by Penn Jillette. A hilarious, insightful, fun and smart book by the more verbose half of the Penn & Teller team. Enjoyed it immensely, laughed a bunch, while at the same time appreciating its thought provoking qualities.

Last Words: A Memoir by George Carlin and Tony Hendra. George Carlin, for me, from the mid-80s until his death a few years ago, was hands-down one of the best stand up comedians who ever plied his craft. His ideas, verbal dexterity, wizardry of concepts, all couched in anti-authority, no-bullshit, 'let me make you think about things in ways you never have'... just genius. Great book. Excerpts below.

Tapped Out: Rear Naked Chokes, the Octagon, and the Last Emperor: An Odyssey in Mixed Martial Arts by Matthew Polly. I read Polly's book American Shaolin a few years ago and dug it. Funny, interesting, well crafted writing. When I found out he'd be writing a book about his adventures in MMA, training for a bout with the Couture camp out in Vegas, as an out of shape/approaching 40 year old, I knew I'd pick it up. Again, another great book for Polly. Well written, funny, engaging, entertaining. Liked it a lot.

Comics

Secret Six: The Darkest House by Gail Simone and J. Calafiore. The final volume of DC Comics best anti-heroes. One of my favorite comic series of the last decade.

Warren Ellis' Strange Killings: Necromancer. The continuing adventures of the deadliest combat magician in the SAS.

SVK - Classic Warren Ellis writing with a clever hook. Worth checking out.

"SVK is a collaboration between writer Warren Ellis, artist Matt "D'Israeli" Brooker and London-based design studio BERG. An experimental publication, SVK comprises the SVK object and a comic book. Comics break the rules of storytelling, invent new ones, and break them again – more often than almost any other medium. This graphic novella is about looking – an investigation into perception, storytelling and optical experimentation that inherits some of the curiosities behind the previous work of BERG...First and foremost SVK is a modern detective story, one that Ellis describes as “Franz Kafka’s Bourne Identity”. It’s a story about cities, technology and surveillance, mixed with human themes of the power, corruption and lies that lurk in the data-smog of our near-future."

Pull quotes & excerpts from "The Devil We Know," "Last Words" & "Confession of a Buddhist Atheist" after the "Read More" break/jump below. Worth reading. If only for all the typing I did.

The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower by Robert Baer

"The United States was the instrument of its own defeat in the Middle East. By decimating Iraq's army, we opened the door for Iran to annex Iraq and its oil through proxies - a process that is now well under way.

Destroying Iraq was the greatest strategic blunder this country has made..."
...
"The Iranians are patient. The think in centuries, eras - unlike the Americans, who think in fiscal years. In Iraq, the Iranians will map progress over the next thirty years, not timed for the next... elections. If Iraq remains an ungovernable country... that's enough to prove Iran's point: American imperialism doesn't work... The Iranians know we'll leave sooner or later."
...
"Nearly everything the average American has been told about Iran is wrong. Iran is not fighting a crusade. It does not want to convert us to Islam. Iran truly believes that for the last thirty years, it has been fighting a straightforward war against occupation.
Iran is not a totalitarian state run by "Islamofascists" who believe they're in some quixotic war with the West and Western civilization. President Ahmadinejad is not intent on starting WWIII; he's a figurehead no more able to take Iran to war than Joseph McCarthy was able to take America to war against Communism. Iran's real leaders are rational, pragmatic, and calculating.
We live in the past; Iran lives in the future... American's have missed Iran's critical transition from... a Shia rebellion and a terrorist state to a classic military power."
...
"...if the United States sticks it out and spends twenty or more years holding Iraq together, we'll still have a messy, impermanent solution, one that quickly fall apart the moment we leave... Iran's interest in Iraq is considerably stronger and more enduring than America's... and it will never overcome the temptation to meddle, to undermine us in Iraq."
...
"...the Iranians don't need a nuclear bomb. If a war is to be fought in the Gulf, Iraq, or Lebanon, Iran will almost certainly fall back on its asymmetrical tactics and weapons... One reason we're obsessed with the idea of Iran's developing nuclear weapons is that we're once again fighting the last war rather than this one.
...The Iranians see a nuclear bomb as nice to have but not crucial to their survival.
...Iran may not yet have nukes, but it has three things that are more important: highly developed asymmetrical fighting skills and weapons; a growing army of hungry, disaffected, street-smart fighters; and an invincible anticolonial message."
...
"When we invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, we went to war against the Taliban and al Qaeda not understanding that they are religious convictions, not countries... Unable to define the enemy, the United States declared war on an idea... How do you wage war against an idea, a way of thinking?
America is not only still fighting WWII, it also sees the world through 19th century ideologies of fascism, communism, liberalism and democracy. Reducing the Taliban to Islamofascists obscures the terms of the conflict... Iran manipulates belief, allowing it to adapt and appeal across sectarian and political lines."
...
"The way Iran sees it, Iran didn't sign the Peace of Westphalia, which established the modern nation-state system in 1648, so there's no need for Tehran to pay any attention to it...
Only Iran's interests mattered, not the West's rule of law."
...
"...Iran views its vital interests through the prism of history - history we either never knew or have chosen to ignore. Iranians are still driven by ancient conflicts and grievances...
Today's Iran sees the West through the prism of the Crusades, with NATO as the modern day Crusader alliance and Turkey as NATO's foothold in the Middle East."
...
"Today in Kabul, you can't miss the contrast. The American and British embassies are surrounded by blast walls, standoff cement barriers, and razor wife. The Iranian embassy, by comparison, is enclosed by a simple wall, with families picnicking on the trim lawn in front. If there are Iranian security guards, you can't seen them.
As much as the Americans like to see themselves as the defenders of democracy, Iran's anticolonialist message is the one people in the Persian Gulf are listening to."
...
"Recognizing Iran for the regional power it is will avoid much of the violence that goes with the creation of empire. We avoided a nuclear confrontation with Russia during the Cold War because we estableish red lines neither country crossed, and in fact worked together to dampen down confect in the Middle East. Why can't Iran play the same role?
The United States shares with Iran a common enemy in the Sunni tafkiris. Both Iran and the West suffer from their random violence, but also would suffer from the collapse of Sunni states like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. When it comes time to do something about a lost nuclear weapon in Pakistan, for example, we'll want Iran on our side - just as we will if the Talivban make a grab for Kabul.
And it wouldn't be as if we were completely siding with Iran, supporitng the Shia against the Sunni. Rather, it would be working with the one Mideast power that can produce results, unlike the Saudis."

Last Words: A Memoir by George Carlin with Tony Hedra

"I've never been a full blown radical. I wasn't cut out to man the barricades. But any time the subversive part of me is satisfied, it delights me."
--
"There was a sinking feeling: that something good was ebbing away and being encouraged in that direction by the usual forces. The establishment was winning - its war, its assassins, its secret government - and that fact overpowered and debilitated me more than it enraged me."
--
"...it brought up again the eternal dilemma: of longing to belong but not liking to belong - even though the group I wanted to belong to now were non-belongers."
--
"Fuck the drug war. Dropping acid was a profound turning point for me, a seminal experience. I make no apologies for it. More people should do acid. It should be sold over the counter. Acid finally moved me from one place to the other; allowed change to take place - change that had been rumbling underground all this time, but which I still needed to have happen to me rather than initiate."
--
"My rejection of the older generation's notions of values and authority were by now complete. In my mind and heart, I was saying "Your values suck, I reject your inherent authority, I don't buy that authority comes on a direct line from God to my parents, to my appointed church people, or to the police or to anyone else." For me, all authority comes from within. All my power comes from within me."
--
"It's a great country, but it's a strange culture. This has got to be the only country in the world that could ever come up with a disease like bulimia; gotta be the only country in the world where some people have no food at all, and other people eat a nourishing meal and puke it up intentionally. This is a country where tobacco kills four hundred thousand people a year, so they ban artificial sweeteners! Because a rat died! You know what I mean? This is a place where gun store owners are given a list of stolen credit cards, but not a list of criminals and maniacs! And now, they're thinking about banning toy guns - and they're gonna keep the fucking real ones! It's the old American Double Standard, ya know: Say one thing, do somethin' different. And of course this country is founded on the double standard, that's our history! We were founded on a very basic double standard: This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free. So they killed a lot of English white people in order to continue owning their black African people so they could kill the red Indian people and move west to steal the rest of the land from the brown Mexican people, giving them a place for their planes to take off and drop nuclear weapons the the yellow Japanese people. You know what the motto of this country out to be? You give us a color - we'll wipe it out!"
--
"The reason I prefer the sledgehammer to the rapier and the reason I believe in blunt, violent, confrontational forms for the presentation of my ideas is because I see that what's happening to the lives of people is not rapierlike, it is not gentle, it is not subtle. It is direct, hard and violent. The slow violence of poverty, the slow violence of untreated disease. Of unemployment, hunger, discrimination. This isn't the violence of some guy opening fire with an Uzi in a McDonald's and forty people are dead. The real violence goes on every day, unheard, unreported, over and over, multiplied a millionfold.

And it is not sufficient to have a "clever riposte." A witty song by the Capitol Steps, "Fa la la, o dear, the killing, hey dilly dilly dilly!" doesn't do it for me.

"FUCK YOU COCKSUCKERS!" is my approach, not to them, I mean, to the world, to the leadership. My response is: When are we going to start assassinating the right people in this country? [Why is it, by the way that the right wing guys assassins have tried to shoot survived? Like Wallace and Reagan? Don't we have any marksmen on our side?]"
--
"...I've found the perspective of time lends texture to your ideas. The longer you live, the richer your matrix gets and the observations you make have more interesting information against which to be compared. The difference between what you see and what you know is richer and more full of possibilities. It's an accumulation of attitude and information that people respond to.
And of course, after a certain age you get points just for not being dead."
--
"There was ritual, and I don't like rituals. There were unwritten rules, and I don't like them either."
--
"I must say, like most adults, I find kids fascination one-on-one. Just watching them drool or look at you funny. Or even saying something bright. But as a class - far too much attention."
--
"The only gang I wanted to be part of was the Loners, membership restricted to one: me...
It always seemed to me that the reasons groups come together were superficial. The group didn't feed me, and I had nothing to contribute to it. I had a deeper goal, this giant puzzle to work on, which was only going to happen if they left me alone. "No one but me can figure me out. No one can help me with it." All the group stuff; rules, uniforms, rituals, bonding, was a distraction. It denied me the chance to solve the giant puzzle: "Who the fuck am I, how did I come together? What are the parts and how do they fit?""
--
"Outside of my audience, groups repel me, because for the sake of group thought, they kill individuality, that wonderful human oneness. I’m wide open to individuals. Fine with individuals. Individuals are just great. Even the most evil man on earth, who’s just eaten a whole dog, I find fascinating and interesting. I’d love to spend a minute or two with him. Discuss the preparation. “You put a little salt on that? Used a little cream?” I’d look in his eyes and his eyes would be from someplace God knows where in the universe and yet for that reason fascinating.

Every individual set of eyes you look into gives you something, whether it’s a blank wall or an infinite regress of barbershop mirrors. Just as fascinating. There’s something in all individuals. I make room for them psychically—even though I might want to get away after a minute and a half. People are wonderful one at a time. Each of them has an entire hologram of the universe somewhere within them.

But as soon as individuals begin to clump, as soon as they begin to clot, they change. Sometimes you have a friend and you say, “Gee, Joe is a great guy. But when he’s with Phil he’s a real jack-off.” Or, “Now that he’s with Linda, the fucking guy is different. He’s changed, he’s not the same old Joe.”

Groups of three, five, ten, fifteen—suddenly we have special little hats, we have arm bands, we have a marching song, a secret handshake and a list of people we don’t agree with. Next we have target practice and plan the things we have to take care of Friday night...

The ideal group for human beings is one. With the occasional sexual visit to the land in the next group. Temporary twosomes are fine. Once upon a time people might have been good up to ten or twelve, or one hundred or so, whatever the ideal tribal unit was. When everybody took care of everybody else’s children, there were no last names, no patriarchy, no patrimony, when property was unheard of. You might have personal stuff: this is my favorite rock, I got an ax I made. But no one owns the tent, everybody belongs in that tent as long as we have our fire. What buffalo there are belong to everybody if we can kill one. Something about that is awfully compelling. But we lost it long ago.

The larger the group, the more toxic, the more of your beauty as an individual you have to surrender for the sake of group thought. And when you suspend your individual beauty you also give up a lot of your humanity. You will do things in the name of a group that you would never do on your own. Injuring, hurting, killing, drinking are all part of it, because you’ve lost your identity, because you now owe your allegiance to this thing that’s bigger than you are and that controls you.

It happens in police culture. You get talking with individual cops and they’re the greatest fucking guys in the world. But you know that when they’re making a domestic disturbance call in the black section of town, they’re going to hit first and ask questions later. And if you happened to be there and called them on it, you’d be the enemy, right or wrong. That great fucking guy would be gone. It’s the same way with military men, with corporate assholes, the same anywhere on earth. And by the way, America’s groups are no better than anyone else’s.

The worst thing about groups are their values. Traditional values, American values, family values, shared values, OUR values. Just code for white, middle-class prejudices and discrimination, justification for greed and hatred.

Do I value a flag? No, of course not. Do I value words on a piece of paper? Depends whose words they are. Do I believe in family values? Depends on whose family — most are pretty toxic and that plural already has me suspicious. So I have a few holdings concerning potential behavior that an outsider could define as values. It’s received beliefs, received wisdom, received values I have trouble with.

My affection for people as individuals and the fact that I identify with them doesn’t extend to the structures they’ve built, the terrible job they’ve done organizing themselves, the fake values that supposedly hold society together. Bullshit is the glue of our society. I love anarchy. Anarchy and comedy are a team. I have a deep suspicion that mankind is not on the right path. Man went wrong a long, long time ago. Religion backing up property, religion backing up the state: "We say this king will be fine" The King saying: "I am the king and the moon is my uncle and he tells me when to plant the crop." All this mass hypnosis. Which is certainly akin to the hypnosis caused by Mass.

I no longer identify with my species. I haven't for a long time. I identify more with carbon atoms. I don't feel comfortable or safe on this planet. The safest thing is to identify with the atoms and the stars and simply contemplate the folly of my fellow species members. I can divorce myself from much of the pain of it all. Once, if I identified with individuals I felt pain; if I identified with groups I saw people who repelled me. So now I identify with no one. I have no passion anymore for any of them, victims or perpetrators, right or left, men or women. I'm still human. I haven't abandoned my humanity, but I have put it in a place that allows my art to function free of entanglements.

My job is to watch the ludicrous dance down here for the humor an entertainment it provides and to drop in and show my former species how fucked up they are...
I'm sure there are people who see these attitudes as a form of escapism. My response has always been: "I don't care. Leave me alone. I'm not going to give you any threads to pick up here, folks. This is all temporal bullshit." Of course, once you tell someone, "This is all temporal bullshit," you've retreated to the realm of the angels. [I realize "temporal and "angels" are Catholic terms, but as I've always said, I did use to be a Catholic. Until I reached the age of reason.]"
--
"This multiplicity of identities inside me that I've never had the opportunity or moment or chance to unleash... I'm a thousand different people that I can climb into in an instant and really inhabit."

Confession of a Buddhist Atheist by Stephen Batchelor

"...I also became familiar with the metaphysical questions the Buddha refuses to comment upon. These are some of the "big" questions to which religions claim to provide the answers: Is the universe eternal or not eternal? Is it finite or infinite? Is the mind the same as or different from the body? Does one continue to exist after death or not? The Buddha dismisses such questions... He compares a person who is preoccupied with such speculations to a man who has been wounded by a poisoned arrow but refuses to have it removed until he knows the "name and clan of the person who fired it; whether the bow a longbow or crossbow... The only legitimate concern for such a person would be the removal of the arrow. The rest is irrelevant."
...
"The heart of Gotama's awakening lay in his unequivocal embrace of contingency. "One who sees conditioned arising," he said, "sees the Dhamma; and one who sees the Dhamma, sees conditioned arising." He recognized how both he and the world in which he lived were fluid, contingent events that sprang from other fluid, contingent events, but that need not have happened. Had he made other choices, things would have turned out differently. "Let be the past," he said to the wanderer Udayin. "Let be the future. I shall teach you the Dhamma; when this exists, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises. When this does not exist, that does not come to be; with the cessation of this, that ceases."
Siddhattha Gotama rejected the idea that freedom or salvation lay in gaining privileged access to an eternal, non-contingent source or ground, whether it be called Atman or God, Pure Consciousness or the Absolute. Freedom, for Gotama, meant freedom from greed, from hatred, and from confusion. Moreover, such freedom (nirvana) was to be found not by turning away from the world but by penetration deep into its contingent heart."
...
"Gotama did for the self what Copernicus did for the earth; he put it in its rightful place, despite its continuing to appear just as it did before. Gotama no more rejected the existence of the self than Copernicus rejected the existence of the earth. Instead, rather that regarding it as a fixed, non-contingent point around which everything else turned, he recognized that each self was a fluid, contingent process just like everything else."
...
"Rather than dismiss the self as fiction, Gotama presented it as a project to be realized."
...
"Rather than seek God -- Gotama suggested that you turn your attention to what is most far from God: the anguisha and pain of life on this earth. In a contingent world, change and suffering are inevitable...
To embrace the contingency of one's life is to embrace one's fate as an ephemeral bu sentient being... To steady one's gaze on the finitude, contingency and anguish of one's existence is not easy; it requires mindfulness and concentration. One needs to make a conscious shft from delight in a fixed place to awareness of a contingent ground. Places to which I am instinctively attracted are places where I imagine suffering to be absent. 'There,' I think, 'if only I could get there, then I would suffer no more.' The groundless ground of contingency, however, holds out no such hope...
The aim of mindfulness is to know suffering fully. It entails paying calm, unflinching attention to whatever impacts the organism... You attend not just the outward stimuli themselves, but equally to your inward reactions to them. You do not condemn what you see as your failings or applaud what you regard as success. You notice things come, you notice them go...
Mindfulness can have a sobering effect on the restless, jittery psyche. The stiller and more focused it becomes, the more I am able to peer into the sources of my febrile reactivity, to catch the first stirring of hatred before it overwhelms me with loathing and spite, to observe with ironic detachment the conceited babbling of ego, to notice at its inception the self-demeaning story that could tip me into depression."
...
"Mindfulness iof suffereing does not, however, lead to morbity and despair. The more one internalizes the a sense of contingency of things, the less one is depressed and irked by pain (for it will pass) and th emore one is awestruck by the presence of the simplest joys...
To know, deep in your bones, how everything you experience is fleeting, poignant and unreliable undermines the rationale for trying to grasp hold of, possess and control it... To embrace this suffering world challenges my innate tendency to see everything from the perspective of self-centered craving."
...
"The decline of craving can result in greater freedom and autonomy, as well as in the potential for greater wisdom and love. One is released, at least momentarily, from fixed conceptions of who you are as a person, from attachemnt to socially sanctioned normed and rules of behavior, from uncertainty about the validity of what one is doing, from the sense that in matters of greatest importance one has to defer to the authority of others. One is freed to set off by oneself along a path, trusting one's own judgment, willing to take risks. One's life becomes orientated around ways to realize one's deepest values in each situation rather than around the fulfillment of egoistic desires or slavish conformity with a set of religious beliefs."
...
"...[Gotama's] answer was consistent with his understanding that a person is formed from a continuum of words and actions over time and cannot be reduced to a fixed 'self.'"
...
"What is it that makes a person insist passionately on the existence of metaphysical realities that can be neither demonstrated or refuted? I suppose some of it has to do with fear of death, the terror that you and your loved ones will disappear and become nothing. But I suspect that for such people, the world as presented to their senses and reason appears intrinsically inadequate, incapable of fulfilling their deepest longings for meaning truth, justice or goodness."
...
"Whenever someone asks me whether I believe in God, I simply have no idea what the question means. Since those who ask tend to be educated and intelligent, I know they are not referring to a bearded old man sitting on a throne in the sky. But what are they referring to? I am just as puzzled by someone who says with equivalent convinction: 'No, I do not believe in God.' What is it that they so emphatically do not believe in? The word God is such an ingrained cultural habit of speech that, as a native English speaker, it is assumed automatically that I know how to use it...
I have read many theological tomes, which do their best to explain the meaing of God, but I am still not much the wiser. God is presented as the source and ground of everything. For Thomas Aquinas, God is esse ipsum: Being itself. But how do you believe in the "source and ground of everything" let alone in "Being itself"? The New Testament tells us that God is Love and that He sent his only begotten Son into the world. But how can the ultimate source and ground of everthing have an emotion like "love" or an intention to "incarnate"? In what possible sense can Being itself be thought of as a Person? At this point, you learn that God is unknowable and utterly beyond any concept you can have of Him, that all descriptions of God are mere figures of speech, imperfect metaphors required to render intelligible something so mysterious and sublime that the human mind is incapable of ever grasping it. I had the funny feeling that I was being led around in circles.
The same kind of intractable theological problems occur in Indian religious thought too..."
...
"However tempting it is form me to dismiss the existence of god and spirits as outdated nonsense, I need to be aware of the equally tenuous foundations of my own beliefs. If challenged, I would be incapable of persuading someone who does not already share my view of the universe or human life that my beliefs about them are true. I once spent a couple of hours trying to persuade a learned and intelligent Tibetan lama that the world is spherical in shape - but with little success. I would have even less success had I tried to convince him of other beliefs I held: those about the Big Bang, evolution by natural selection, or the neural foundations of consciousness. I believed these thing on much the same grounds that he believed in disembodied gods and spirits. Just as I unquestioningly accepted the authority of eminent scientists, so he accepted the authority of eminent Buddhist teachers... I had to recognize that many of my truth-claims were no more or less reasonable than his.
I know very little with anything apporaching certainty... I drift and swim through life on a tide of derivative beliefs that I share with others who belong to the same kind of cultures as myself...
I have relinquished the idea that a 'true' belief is one that corresponds to someting that exists 'out there' in or beyond reality somewhere... a belief is valued as true because it is useful, because it works, because it brings tangible benefits to human beings and other creatures."
...
"This dispute marks another phase in the breakdown and disintegration of the Tibetan state. The gods don't work anymore. However you explain it, Tibet's ancien regime failed in its primary duty as a government: to guarantee the integrity of the state and ensure the security of its people. The lamas were convinced that powerful and invisible protectors safeguarded Tibet against its enemies... In reality, though, the Tibetans' occult defense shield was useless against dialectical materialism and the guns of the People's Liberation Army... Now, fifty years later, the exile community - supported by a fervent body of Western Buddhists - is still squabbling over which protector god has the greatest clout.
...
"To be no longer manipulated by Mara is equivalent to being free from him. The Buddha's freedom is found not in destroying greed and hatred, bu tin comprehending them as transient, impersonal emotions that will pass away of their own accord as long you do not cling to and identify with them.
In Pali, Mara means 'the killer.' The devil is a mythic way of talking about whatever imposes limits... anything that wears you down or causes your life to be reduced... other kinds of 'death' can be imposed by social pressures, political persecution, religious intolerance, war, famine, earthquakes, and so on...
Gotama's Dhamma was to embrace this suffering world without be overwhelmed by the attendant fear or attachment, craving or hatred, confusion or conceit, that come in its wake."
...
"Without a rigorous, self-critical discourse, one risks lapsing into pious platitudes and unexamined generalizations."

Hookah Time.

2012-04-30T11:25:00.000Z

"So do you ever think about things... and stuff?"