silent thunder

I've got your back. As to memory and brain elasticity. Synaptic highways are like muscles, using them keeps them viable. I have a growing fondness for koans and riddles... And after reading on several occasions from what seemed to me reputable sources that learning an entirely new skill shows noticable improvement in brain elasticity, two years ago I bought a simple acoustic guitar and started teaching myself chords. Not sure if it's helping in the brain dept... but recently my son and I brought my wife to joyful tears when we serenaded her with three little birds in the kitchen. I figured the hand requirements being motor function combined with song lyrics and cord progressions would be sufficiently new territory that my brain would not have any of those pathways and would need to make some new stuff happen. Either way, it's a simple joy now to strum. and you're right about music as a memory trigger, my sis used it with Mum to call her up from time to time. on that note...

I first heard this song while watching a Japanese film and this song was a major theme that would play throughout the film as the camera followed the main character about in his wanderings. I was convinced it was a Beatles tune that I had previously never heard and I drove myself nuts for weeks trying to figure out if it was paul or john and how I'd not ever heard it before. This was far enough back in the interwebs that every song ever recorded was still not yet represented online and youtube was not even an idea yet. When I eventually tracked it down and realized it was the Bee Gees I instantly went on a bit of a rampage of their stuff and uncovered a whole bunch of things I had disregarded in my arrogant assumptive youth.

Five generations! What a romp you gang must have gotten up to! The mind body thing is truly and epically mysterious, her mind was gone and her body was vital as a steam engine for the last years. And even though she eventually lost most of her personal memory and identification, she never lost her mannerisms, expressions, nor her love of stories and she still hated broccoli lol. When she passed, my sister whom was the one person she still recalled most of the time, was in the room with her, reading to her, which in the end was her very favorite thing in the whole world. Such simple joy... I'm reminded of one of my favorite movie lines from the first film in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Bilbo says of his eleventy first birthday party... "It is no bad thing, to celebrate a simple life."

Woof! That's nice stuff.

not a bit... that was a gift.

My sister and I only realized how far my Mum's dementia had gotten, when a neighbor informed us they found her wandering one morning around the neighborhood, unsure which door was hers... It rises incrementally and she being such a shrewd woman of keen intellect was able to deftly manage it without alerting us by systematically sizing down her contacts and required excursions to the bare minimum. My sister who lived only a couple miles away was devastated by the surprise and how it could get to such a point without her suspecting. My own devastation came when my sister told me she had to take all the pictures of me away and that I should not plan any more visits, or send any gifts. She had completely forgotten me. But since I am the spitting image of my Father, with whom she was still severely resentful even to the day of her death, she would see my face and think of him and it would upset her fiercely. Dementia took my mum from me, five or so years before her body passed. It is a merciless and insidious disease for those it leaves in its wake and those who witness it. But oddly, on a day to day level. In many aspects it provided a relief for Mom. Her childhood was desperately difficult. Her Mother was a brutal and unloving woman and her life was a deeply challenging one. In many respects, the dementia allowed many of the harshest memories of her life to fade, to be replaced by simple presence in the now. Deep abiding love and respect Barbara. Thank you for sharing.

I'm such a gem and crystal whore, I'm loving the turn in this thread. I love to simply sit and share presence with them and to touch them with my eyes is divine. Somewhere we have an old bums thread specifically about gems/crystals and precious metals for talismans. Don't have it bookmarked any more but it's here somewhere, I'll look for it in a bit perhaps it'll get some legs again. Here's one of my crown jewels. Yeh Ming Zhu, or The Dragon's Pearl from Northern China. It's a unique member of the Flourite family, unique as it's the only flourite that glows from regular daylight, no UV needed. this is Lao. I affectionately call him 'the old man' or 'grandpa'. Here he's glowing in daylight and couched in magnets I shape into sacred geomentric shapes to bathe him in frequently (when he asks) and here he is at 4am, 7 hours after sunset while out camping. these things absorb and radiate energy so potently and uniquely. I'm blessed to have three gracing me with their presence these days.

I hear you. It's really staggering, the actual implications of how it affects the teachings leaves me gob-smacked. Particularly when access to unfiltered info is so rare. I suspect (and hope) it's not out of any ill will or desire to contort the meanings and control the product... but that it's a case of translating aspects that one assumes they comprehend fully, when they only comprehend in their capacity. As the translators could not grasp the full meaning, they translated not accurately but to their ability and thus their interpretation reflects not the absolute truth, but their filtered experience of the pali core. I have the experience repeatedly now in my 50's with many of the old classic scripts I performed in my youth; Shakespeare, Checkov, Tennessee Williams. And many of the great books I read as a young man. I would read and perform certain incredibly nuanced scripts when I was a young actor in my 20's and thought I fully comprehended them. And I did... I fully comprehended them at my level, to the limit and extent of my experience and my capacity. But that does not mean I fully comprehend them in their full capacity, as shared by the author, nor did I have awareness or understanding of their full nuance. It was simply beyond my ken. When I re=experience these works now decades later, it's as if I'm reading them for the first time in some cases. When I was 20 and my awareness and experience and understanding of life was like a golf ball. I would read a script or a book or a philosophical treatise and have a golf ball sized understanding and experience of them. If/when awareness expands, say to the size of a grapefruit, rereading that same material renders an entirely new dimension of comprehension. Now though, I no longer assume I'm getting it all now. There's the sense that while I'm garnering more than I did it's still just at the level of my awareness now... it's not absolute. That's liberating and joyful instead of being dis-heartening. There is always more to unfold into... But these sharings on citta. It's stiking me like nothing else I've encountered in buddhism before... lightning on a clear day kind of stuff. I'm still reeling at the ramifications and saturating now in the ramifications of a few sentences heard yesterday morning... I sense these will be percolating and will be bearing fruit for as long as I keep exploring. Buddhism has never drawn me or engaged me the way this has. Synchronistically, just after encountering that first video on citta... I encountered a book by Lama Yongden and his adopted Mother Alexandra David-Neel. In the intro, It addresses how many of the secret oral teachings in Tibet weren't secret out of a desire to keep such things hidden, but due to the fact that such teachings were understood to simply not be suitable for 'children's minds'. But as students cleansed citta, teachers would offer simple questions from these teachings to prompt the citta in the student and nudge a revisiting of notions of assumptions about life meant to further cleanse the dust from the eyes and cultivate further release. Deeply humbled by this stuff. The book is called The Secret Teachings of Tibetan Buddhism. Alexandra David-Neel and Lama Yongden her adopted son, traveled China, Japan, Korea, Tibet for 40 years seeking out advanced Sages and seeking absolute truth. Some of it is clearly beyond my child's mind. But what has landed on fertile soil is proving to shake my foundations in wonderous ways.

simply staggering... in the original pali there are... no words for nun, monk or buddhism so what did gotama teach? my teachings are to be deemed brahmayana 'the path to the brahman, the path to the absolute' whose citta is devoid of defilements... is deemed a brahman... such a one is crossed over, tathagata... become brahman the highest apalachian in doctrine of earliest buddhism is the attainment of brahmanhood wholly liberated brahman. wholly awake. has become liberated. wow. just wow.

Very glad to see you've returned my friend. There does seem much synchronicity with our current processes from my end as well. Many of your posts ring with resonance for me, particularly over the last few months, as things on my end have been amping up to a crescendo. And I deeply appreciate any exploration and conversation regarding this topic and the search for absolute reality. When I happened upon his take on citta from the ancient teachings, it really rang my bell... rather gob-smacked was my reaction... as you say, it runs contrary to much of what I've encountered in buddhist sharings. I was sincerely hoping someone with experience would respond and take up the conversation so I could gauge my reaction from theirs. Thank you. I was originally drawn to this guy for his insights on Natural Philosophy regarding the nature of magnetism, light and dielectrical nature of phenomena (which are nothing short of incredible by the way), only later, did I discover his work on ancient sanskrit and buddhist studies and my impression of him flowered to deeper respect. On my way to meet some friends for a day of museum hunting and conversation. But the moment I'm home, I look forward to checking out the rest of the videos you linked. As you say, this stuff is too important not to share. I also love his extremely direct if somewhat gruff manner of sharing info. I find it refreshing. Cheers!

Robert Saltzman in his book The Ten Thousand Things describes the illusory notion of choice far better than I did for anyone inclined to look further. It also addresses many core tenets of Taoism in a very accessible (to me) and direct manner as well as being filled with a selection of his photography.

I hear you brother and I empathize with your sense of it. I've rejected any notion of 'conscious choice' pretty much the whole of my adult life. In my experience, humans do not make independent choices. We respond to stimuli in predictable manners based on our behavioral models created between the ages of 0-7 and running in the unconcscious, then afterward we explain that unconscious response and apply some conscious control to it. As I've experienced myself humans are compelled to action, or non action in response to stimuli, not based on some calculated consciously directed intentions. Ask soldiers what happened when they reached out to save a buddy in battle and you'll constantly hear echoes of "I didn't think, I just did it." or "I only thought about it when we were out of the shit." Stimulus, response, action. Any choice occurs on the preconcscious level. We apply standards and stories later. By the time an action is in process, the motivational/behaviorally conditioned responses have long since unconsciously already been established and the action or non action promulgated. Our 'decisions' to me in life are as predictable in nearly all circumstances as chemical reactions in a petry dish are... After the response/action/non action, we then often analyze with the conscious mind and apply rationalizations couched in the language of "I chose to help that girl" when the reality was, no conscious choice was made in the moment in response to stimuli, a compulsion to act or not rose and was carried out almost automatically. A girl fell and before thought was possible, I reached out and helped her... only afterward do I apply notions of conscious choice storylines in my estimation... this mainly I feel, give us some semblance and reinforce notions of illusory control in a great soup of energy knowns as absolute reality.

Oh Jeez... how'd I not think of... Don Rickles! Johnny Carson Jonathan Winters Danny DeVito Andy Kaufman and Miss Betty White!

Boy this rings the bell... some words are just words. and some words ring with presence... like a tuning fork. your phrasing and manner of sharing often results in sympathetic resonance in awareness. Thanks again for sharing here Spotless. Deep respect and appreciation.

Nice topic and really appreciate the pics Starjumper. That Mountain really sings, as does the valley and that gem in the last one... woof! I'm a crystal/gem hound and a blade collector from way back. Been very keen on their presence since childhood and the setting for that stone is pure awesome. Tesla spoke of the awareness and presence of crystals at length. Would love to hear its story if you feel like sharing. Incidentally, I have two Wakizashis in my collection (stainless blades not high carbon) with identical habaki, tsuba, tsuka and kashira to the one you're holding. Though I swapped out the tsuka ito changing the nylon cord from the factory with soft leather for durability and grip.

I find comedy and humor to be high skills for internal development. Being able to transmute anger to laughter is perhaps one of my most cultivated skills this lifetime. I spent years traveling and performing comedy myself with a troupe and solo. George Carlin - number one for me. He always struck me as more of an adroit social commentarian than a pure comedian, particularly his last three decades of work... and as I've come to read more Chuang Tze, I view George as a modern version of him in the way he uses humor to point out social absurdities. Gilda Radner Lilly Tomlin Carol Burnett Jane Curtin Phyllis Diller Lenny Bruce Jack Benny Bob Newhart Richard Pryor Robin Williams Bill Hicks Eddie Izzard (few make history so funny) Doug Stanhope (king of irreverent humor) Tracey Ullman Madeline Kahn off the top of my head. eta: Rea Pearlman Tina Fey Lewis Black

fixed link

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sun rise? or eiye rise? or sun r(eye)se or i r(eye)se great open questions mate.

Intriguing how these observations mirror each other, one from a sixties counter-culturist and the other steeped in the deepest oral traditions of Tibetan Buddhist realization.

How many times... have you encountered the saying, 'When the student is ready, the Master speaks?' Do you know why that is true? The door opens inward. The Master is everywhere, but the student has to open his mind to hear the Masters Voice. Robert Anton Wilson

"Certitude is seized by some minds, not because there is any philosophical justification for it, but because such minds have an emotional need for certitude." "My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence." Robert Anton Wilson

I made it as far as book 4 then lost interest. Author struck me as more of a literary serial killer than a storyteller.