Victory

All victory is my victory.
All failure is my failure.

A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, The Perfection of Zeal

50. This world overwhelmed by mental afflictions is incapable of accomplishing its own self-interest. Therefore, I must do it for them. I am not as incapable as the world is.
54. Therefore, with an unswerving mind, I shall bring disaster to adversity. For as long as I am conquered by adversities, my desire for victory over the three worlds is ludicrous.
55. I should overcome everything and not be overcome by anything. I should acquire this self-confidence, for I am a Child of Lions, the Jinas.
62. One should diligently apply oneself to the action in which one engages. Intoxicated by that action, one should be of an insatiable mind, like one striving for the satisfaction of the result of a game.

Things I Forget

I hide in my formalism. Self-care is the most revolutionary act.

Puh-Pum Puh-Pum

There are things worse than death. Half-life. Silent agony. There are things better than mere living. Isn't it funny then that the threat of true life can send a person into half-living? I shall endeavor to follow no law that offends that law I find written on my heart.




To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

Err on the side of GTFO

Sometimes people accuse me of not being serious enough.
Oh, my mistake. You see, I took it as a farce, whilst you took it as a tragedy.
This tragic comedy gets the best of us all, so it looks.


Joke 'em if they can't take a fuck.

Twine

Chapter 74, Tao Te Ching: If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to. If you aren't afraid of dying, there is nothing you can't achieve. Trying to control the future is like trying to take the master carpenter's place. When you handle the master carpenter's tools, chances are that you'll cut your hand.

Connect the Dots

Capacity to Endure

If sustainability is, well, sustainable... (long pause) why is such a major selling point the idea of government tax breaks and subsidies. I mean, if you're genuinely sustainable... the fuck you need the government to help supplement you? It's supposed to be the definition of "does not need subsidies" and fucking yet... I read recently this little GEMSTONE. "If the government is to play a positive role in sustainability, it needs to become the carrot." The carrot is sustainability, you potato-head. Is anyone else seeing this? It's a green-wash. With all the talk about 80 MPG electric whatever and compost and personal gardens and halogen lamps and a cat that eats his own turds. Like, what's the BFD. This is not sustainable. This makes me, and some cats, very ill. Yeah, eat your vegetables.

In Sickness and Health

If your motivation is to avoid badness (suffering, failure, whatever) then the best you can ever become is mediocre. It is a sickness in this country. So many institutions are infected with mediocrity. It's not acceptable. Find something worth dying for. Some great thing that's worth your time. Better yet, worth your blood, sweat and tears. Find something worth fighting for. THAT is life. So I'm caretaking for an elderly man. Everyone around him stresses survival. I stress life. This pisses a lot of people off. Instead of merely BEING ALIVE, I want him, others and myself, to LIVE. It's analogous to money, actually. Money is only as good as what you spend it on just as living (having life merely) is only as good as how you spend your life. If you spend your money trying to close your heart from the world, barricade yourself in your giant fucking house and fracture yourself into sickening little pieces, hoo fucking rah. You've just failed. Congratulations, you're rich and totally fucking stupid. Hurray, you're alive- but only half-living. You're the walking dead. No, mediocrity isn't for me. I don't want to watch this sick show any longer. I seek greatness- and greatness will meet me.

Jamming Jnana Jackassery

What is Jnana Yoga?
!!!!! http://yoga108.org/pages/show/55-jnana-yoga-introduction !!!!!
Everything here has been taken from that website. FYI Jnana yoga is one of the four main paths of yoga and the most direct road to reach the goal described in the philosophy of advaita vedanta: Self-realization.

The Four Means to Salvation
The jnana yoga student should equip himself with the four means of salvation in order to be fit to receive the knowledge of Brahman. These four means are called Sadhana Chatushtaya.

The student can work on these practices all at once or serially. For example starting with the first one for a week or two, or for a month, then proceeding with the second one for the same period of time, and so on.

Sadhana Chatushtaya
These four means are:

Viveka
Viveka means discrimination. This is the intellectual ability to discriminate, or discern, between the real and the unreal. Vedanta defines the real as being permanent and the unreal as being temporary. The absolutely real, Brahman, is eternal. It lasts for ever.

Vairagya
Vairagya means dispassion, detachment. There is a logical order in the four means. After sufficient practice of viveka, the temporary, ephemeral nature of the world and its objects becomes obvious and a natural lack of attraction to them takes place. This is vairagya. One should then endeavor to become more dispassionate in order to purify the mind and improve one's concentration and steadiness of mind.

Shad-sampat
Shad-sampat means the six virtues. This practice actually consists in developing six qualities or virtues. They are:

Sama - Tranquility or control of mind. Calmness. This is the ability to keep the mind within and unaffected by the external world.

Dama - Control of the senses. This consists in not letting the senses run out towards the sense objects. To the question, "Why do we need to control the senses when we can directly work on sama and control the mind itself - the mind being superior and more powerful than the senses?", the vedantins answer: If one were able to control the mind perfectly, dama would be unnecessary, otherwise it is a more powerful strategy to work on the mind apparatus from all sides.

Uparati - Renunciation of activities which are not duties. Following the last two practices, the mind is so peaceful and calm most desires have been eradicated and there is no more reason to perform the activities in which most people indulge. Swami Sivananda beautifully expressed this practice in his famous motto: "Simple living, high thinking."

Titiksha - Endurance, forbearance of the pairs of opposites. The mind must become strong enough to not waver in the face of the opposites: success and failure, hot and cold, pleasure and pain, sunshine and rain, etc.

Shraddha - Faith. It is defined by Sri Sankaracharya as faith in one's guru, god, the self (atman) and the scriptures (shastras).

Samadhana - Perfect concentration, one-pointedness of the mind. It takes a great degree of mastery to reach this level. Few reach it.


Mumukshutva
Mumukshutva means intense longing for liberation. When this stage is reached, moksha (liberation ) is not one of the jnani's desires, it is not even the biggest desire, it is the ONLY desire.

"An Ounce of Practice is Worth Tons of Theory"

So said Swami Sivananda. Sadhana chatushtaya is the foundation of the practice of jnana yoga. It is of paramount importance for the beginner and no one is too advanced for these important qualifications.
Good practice!

Dog Party Morality

Today I saw a dog party. Yeah, a party for dogs. A dog birthday party. For dogs. With dogs. About dogs. It's a dog party.

There were about, oh, I don't know, twenty people and something like six dogs (wearing birthday hats and pink ribbons). Most were bulldogs- one had it's nails painted. Rich family, ugly fucking dogs. Anyway.

The family, in their sun hats and sun dresses and oversized sunglasses... were drinking champagne. Five bottles worth. They had reserved a huge table, effectively taking up all the space on the patio at this restaurant. There were presents for dogs and bowls of water and little children coming up to pet the dogs... dog party. Yeah, ok. Established.

What I wanted to write about- and what was really interesting about this whole event, was that the dogs would occasionally fight. You've got this huge fucking bulldog with painted nails and a pink harness with little pink bows and this obnoxious party hat, and he's fucking chasing this tiny dog around the patio. He's growling and barking and knocking important-looking shit over everywhere.

And here you find the coolest thing in the fucking world. I'm telling you. Here it is.

No matter how much you dressed up these fucking bulldogs, they were still animals. No matter how well fed they were, no matter what you tried to do to them to make them into your little, cute animal toys, they were still ANIMALS. And animals have this instinct- and so you get this growling and barking and ... you see? That, to me, is beautiful. One of the most beautiful things.

No matter how much the family would like to have those ugly fucking dogs act like animated pillow pets, they couldn't escape animal-fucking-nature (neither dogs or people). Animal nature happens to be geared towards what works. Not what you'd like to have happen, not what you've paid for or worked towards- all the artificial shit dies.

If morality is the whole idea of "what should be done" then everything is all geared towards "being moral." All the human beings and ridiculously pampered, over glamorized pets- as well as rocks, mountains, oceans, space dust... all have to follow what works. No matter how many purple bows or other useless fancy shit. Universe just don't bend over because you painted your dogs nails. Don't work that way.

The highest human paradox is the urge to want something other than what is. It's like, instead of celebrating the fact that we're animals, so many of the members of our species try to fight that fact. We should be celebrating! We are the product of amazing universal space shit! We're the little coalesced carbon blobs of exploded stars! HOW FUCKING AMAZING IS THAT?! And yet, some of these amazing blobs of carbon and hydrogen rather watch the Kardashians than sit in awe and wonder of the world they live in daily.

It's a beautiful thing to realize that life tends towards what works. Even if that means the majority of the population is as dumb as rocks, those rocks improve over the course of a single human lifetime. Just remember it took prokaryotes a few billion years to get their shit together and form multi-cellular organisms. Hell, I could form a chess club in an afternoon. So, in relation to the development of the history of the known world, even your eggo-head of a neighbor is doing pretty swell.

So, you know, in conclusion, or whatever...
Do what works.



Because it's the fucking best thing ever.
(all the cool biological systems are doing it)





OH! This also means that the laws governing ... fucking... volcano shit and, like, plate tectonics and like, blueberry muffin mix... are the same laws that govern snobby fucking kids with ugly fucking dogs.

That's the coolest.

This has been another episode from the strangeness that is the world we live in. (which is, incidentally, totally fucking rad)

Unmovable object. Unstoppable force.

It's the fundamental paradox. You want X and to avoid Y, except you need Y to get X. Failure to resolve this paradox can be seen with a simple example. Have you ever known someone who is so obsessed with the technicalities of language that it makes it difficult for them to express themselves? It's the feeling of wanting to FEEL correct over BEING correct. Failure to resolve this paradox is seen when a person wants their particular method to be correct more than they want to do the correct thing.

It's the basic meaning behind the image of Yamataka, the indestructible destroyer of death.



Fuck, I love that image.

People who have met with this paradox without resolving it speak of a place within themselves that they can never go. A place that would destroy them if they went (into it, explored it, opened it up, whatever). And uh, it would. But it wouldn't destroy them. It doesn't make sense until you explore that place and it's not the kind of decision you can really make just sitting on the couch or whatever. It's an experience. You can reach that place a number of ways, including meditation- but it's not a choice one can make without significant risk. Actually, if you don't see the risk, then you're a total fucking idiot and you're probably going to die.

Bravery is being scared and doing it anyway. You've got to realize what you've got to lose... and then you've got to do it because what it represents is worth more than mere survival.

You've got to see something worthwhile beyond death. Something beyond your own life that is worth working towards.

That's the greatest thing in the world. It's also the most terrible.

So uh... let's boogy.

Motherfucker. Check it.

http://www.yamantaka.org/component/content/article/1-vajrabhairava-yamantaka-an-introduction.html

BIG SUR MOTHERFUCKERS

Tomorrow, a drive up the coast. I need that. I shall have that.