Karl

I remarked on that possibility previously. "You can check out but you can never leave". No matter how many times you vote against their wishes they will have us continue voting until we come up with the answer they want. I'm still suspicious about Boris and his agenda. He already said he thought a leave vote woukd trigger further negotiations and was swiftly smacked down by Cameron. If you remember the quip about divorces at PMQs ?

...achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death. Joy is not the absence of pain, intelligence is not the absence of stupidity, light is not the absence of darkness, an entity is not the absence of a nonentity. Building is not done by abstaining from demolition; centuries of sitting and waiting in such abstinence will not raise one single girder for you to abstain from demolishing....existence is not a negation of negatives. Evil, not value, is an absence and a negation.... To gain values that do not contradict reality and therefore do not contradict ones morals-be that a meal when hungry, an invitation to a party, a diamond necklace or a promotion are then predicated on the root of all value judgement-ones own life and therefore ones survival. That these goal directed actions give pleasure is to understand that one has been succesful in that primary action. To feel pain is to know that one has failed. Yet one does not make pleasure the standard, but the gaining of the value a standard, by which satisfaction of attainment is the measure of that success.

Osborne is a self inflicted wound.

:-)

Or your values and behaviour have changed. Friends might very well be act as bell weather of foolish behaviour, or they might not be the kind of friends we really needed. The question is 'are you being rational now and we're you being rational previously ?' My point is the OP is not simply pushing the friend away, he/she wishes the friend to see the sense in his behaviour. I would suggest that trying to get a friend to justify ones actions is an exercise in total evasion of personal responsibility. No one requires anyone to act as an enabler-that's what alcoholics and drug abusers do.

You could do both. Unless you simply give up, then you will always have a requirement for a home, food, warmth. It's only a matter of degree is it not ? You have reduced your requirements because it was difficult to maintain them, but you are still maintaining this reduced lifestyle. Someone could say that you were being far too materialistic and should aspire to live naked in a cave and eat moss. I completely agree with you that people are seeking pleasure as a standard (hedonism), instead of being rewarded with pleasure as a result of rational selfishness. If your rational self interest results in being able to afford a comfortable, pleasurable lifestyle then that isn't detrimental. It is only when you seek pleasure as the standard in and of itself that things go wrong.

Man has always to be shown as brutal, violent and uncooperative unless at war by legions of play and film makers. Be it Shakespeare or Kubrick. Meanwhile our animal programs are full of tender hearted Lions and caring chimpanzees. The amount of time dedicated to praising the Dolphin as the mammal of supreme peace and intelligence-I love to watch the faces of animal lovers when they see what Dolphins really do to each other and other creatures in the wild.

Greater perspective when hunting. Just like mere cats stand up to get a earlier view of approaching danger.

That its my view should be obvious as I said it. I'm not going to soften it up as if I didn't precisely mean what I said, that I should somehow suggest I meant less than I did, or that I didn't quite have confidence in saying it. I meant it exactly as I said and exactly in the way I said it. I didn't give up the practices. I gave up imagining that the practices were any more than what they are, which is mental masturbation. What happens after masturbation ? Mind goes blank after samhadi is reached. Relaxed, bliss. Sometimes you need to take a break from a busy mind, just as you need to take a break from the ever present desire to mate. Friends share your values, they don't oppose them, but first you must choose your friends by the values you hold. If you don't have any clear values, you won't have any clear friends. To believe that a friends opposition to your actions is somehow a justification, or affirmation that those actions are sound, seems a very treacherous method of judgement. So, a bit of insight: why do you need to go on a retreat ? Why does any kind of practice mean that it requires a church, Ashram or any other kind of special place ? Where are practices leading if they do not flow from the everyday realities of life. Why attempt to elevate something above reality ? These are questions you should ask, then practices can be put in their right context within reality. I would suggest very strongly that this is the Dao. There is no 'getting to' where one already is. First realise one is already and then everything comes from that. So, then what is the difference between someone who goes blindly through life without being consciously aware and rational and one who practices long and hard for abdication from the mind ? The only difference is that one is ignorant of their ignorance, the other is deliberately trying to achieve ignorance. The result is much the same.

Remember that 'serious cultivation' doesn't put food on the table or produce anything of value to anyone. It's purely mental masturbation. There is nothing wrong with masturbation, it's healthy when practised alongside the rest of life. You don't have to give up friends and family because you masturbate- or join a group of dedicated masturbators. To give up everything for masturbation might seem like a good idea, but it puts your survival at serious risk. The aim of many Ashrams is to encourage what amounts to dependence by discouraging independent thought. If you haven't achieved enlightenment you are told you are not practicing dilligently enough. To every question comes the answer 'practice harder'. With the advent of modern communication there is now no requirement to go to the Ashram, the Ashram comes to you. The danger remains the same.

I don't know your circumstances Orion. I'm suggesting you be open to the possibility that what you are doing IS harmful. My wife once asked me if I was intending to disappear one day and head for an Ashram in India. Sometimes you can be a long way up an escalator without realising it-the fall can be pretty spectacular and pretty bruising. Luckily for me I was back pedalling the entire time and never got too high. Just be mindful of what you do. It's quite alright to get out from under a kind of lifestyle and associates that are harmful to your life, but quite another to reject the love and values of those that enhance your life. The video explains how it is possible for practices to isolate you from life and then from those you value and who share your values. There are many who are sucked into cults, or just into individual nihilistic behaviour in pursuit of the sacrifice of mind. I'm not saying that this is what you are doing, but maybe you should heed the concern and examine your motives.

What I'm saying is that pursuing or rejecting happiness as the STANDARD of value is erroneous. The intrincisist (the religious monk) rejects happiness as he sees that this to be the problem. The subjectivist is concerned with the emotional fulfilment of pleasure seeking and does whatever he wants to get it. Pleasure is a consequence of rational value judgement, it cannot succesfully be the main driver either by rejecting it, or doing whatever one wants to get it. Therefore, both intrincisist and subjectivist are drinking at the same bar. Both are using pleasure/happiness/joy/bliss as the standard-what they 'feel' is right. One looks for any sign that pleasure is being had and sees to it that it is removed. The other seeks it for the sake of itself as the primary goal. Pleasure is the 'consequence' of right action, not the goal.

Exactly what I meant by the erroneous pursuit of pleasure/enjoyment/happiness as the standard of value. That isn't to say that this is what you have done, but It is what you believe you have done-simply by exchanging one kind of life for another. In other words you remain hedonistic and seek pleasure as the standard by the means of nature/reading/simple living. Why would it matter if you were living the grand city life, or that of a peasant ? So, now check to see if it was really the exchange of material lifestyles that resulted in happiness, or was it that you began seeking rational values. If you write because you wish to produce and therefore get pleasure as a result of that productivity then that works. However, it isn't the reduction in material goods that has brought you pleasure, you could equally have done that whilst flying in your own private jet and having a penthouse suite in New York. I don't know your circumstances, but it would seem to me that you perhaps gave up the pursuit of pleasure as the standard of value and discovered rational values. That being the case, you didn't actually 'sacrifice' anything at all did you ? So, to send others to 'sacrifice' in the name of pleasure as the standard of value would be the wrong approach.

That's a false alternative. It is not one option or another. It is not necessary to live a hedonistic lifestyle of subjectivist which amounts to 'doing whatever you FEEL like doing'-regarding happiness as the standard of value; nor the intrincisist that rejects enjoyment as a dereliction of an ethical self-equating happiness to selfishness, ambition and materialism. The intrincisist urges to give up trying to find happiness. The Subjectivist says to go after it by any random means chosen. One says pleasure is anamalistic and unspiritual. The other says grab any opportunity we can. Both approaches lead man astray by denying deep, abiding joy is even possible. It leads to the belief that life is really just a living hell.

Coup and Revolution tend to be used interchangeably by those seeking to grab power themselves. A revolution should be a long metamorphism along philosophical lines which exchanges tyranny for Liberty. Unfortunately those that urge revolution are collectivists intent on even greater tyranny.

or just maybe she is right ? I don't know your situation, but it's certainly true that practices can lead one towards not so splendid isolation. Have a look at this video, be open minded and see if what you are doing applies.

Try again ;-) You realise when you point out a fallacy that you must name it and detail it ?

Redistribution of wealth doesn't work because it is based on a false assumption that the wealth of the wealthy makes the poor, poor. It's such a ludicrous assertion and yet very few question it. Therefore the state sets about levelling everyone up in the mistaken belief that equality is necessary and desirable. The result is that everyone gets poorer, including the poor. Meanwhile government workers shovel unearned money into their pockets on the proviso they are doing productive work in taking and distributing wealth they took no part in creating. Not to mention the hoards of business that spring up to try and manage taxation for the producers, the offshore havens, accountants, lawyers that also produce nothing of substance, but are made wealthy by the process which now makes their services necessary-it is literally a massive job creation scheme in which huge amounts of valuable resource are wasted producing no value what so ever.

It just goes to show that physicists don't make good economists. Besides a fewobvious holes in his theory. 1) Somebody has to purchase, maintain, replace, build the machines. 2) Much of what we produce today, we didn't produce 12 months ago. 3) Somebody must trade for the product or it is in effect worthless and the machine owner would go bust-a good example is the current cost of steel on the world markets. 4)New entrants into the market push the older producer out/ force him to lower his prices. 5)Badly managed businesses regularly go bust, they aren't permanent. Having cornered the market on hairnets, a businessman refuses to react to the innovation of hairspray and his business folds. 6) the greater the efficiency of product produced, the higher the abundance, the lower will be the price point so poorer people have access to it. There should be no limits on wages-either up or down. Having to reduce the minimum wage is a guaranteed necessity as it will prohibit greater and greater numbers of people from being able to sell their labour. It is in effect a labour prohibition and can destroy an economy very quickly if it is set too high. The market price for labour must be allowed to fluctuate in order to correctly allocate resource to the most valued needs of the market as a whole. Just as in any commodity, if the state insisted that say, wheat must sell for a minimum wage, the result would be piles of unsold, rotting wheat that the starving would be prohibited from eating and the farmer from selling. In the end the farmer would cease to produce and then no wheat would be available at all. That is how any price fixing effects an economy if set too high. Alternatively it can be set too low. In which case the cost to produce is higher than the cost of sales. Again, the farmer simply has to stop production. The attempt to fix prices at lower than market cost ends up with none of the product being available for anyone. Anyone with half a brain should be able to understand the damaging impact of state price fixing.

I think you have discovered what most of us discover as we get older, that you aren't what you do. When we are younger we get a career and hobbies that are part of a lifestyle. We don't really think about who we are because life is chock full of distractions and pace. Around the age of 40 (for men)can begin a time of introspection-we start to slow down-and realise we have an identity outside of the one which we have created for ourselves. We wonder what this new 'us' is because it seems radically different. It is an identity we had not guessed at and it begins to flower in much the same way as we experienced puberty. It's a confusing time as we try and wrestle to get comfortable in a new skin. This started for me at 40 and by 45 I had made a radical career move away from a very lucrative position in the hope of finding the truth about who I was. It didn't really stop until 10 years later when the swirl of it finally settled into middle age. At that point the need for the kind of false me needed to build a family and home life had vanished. I think this is really what they call a mid life crisis, but it isn't really that. It's just another stage of maturity. On this forum we have a mix of the old and young. Many of the young are in the prior stage. For them, the practices, martial arts, philosophy a more part of the pre 40 s careerist phase where what they practice is part of their character. Later on this will change as they discover an uneasiness with that sense of previous self. It seems to me that this is quite a dangerous time for men and one which most of us end up struggling through without any kind of support. We live far longer now than we once did and still actively well into 70s/80s for many. Coping with the physical and mental change of aging is a great challenge.

There is a difference between absolute and eternal. There is an absolute 'I' as long as we are alive and consciously aware of an independent 'I'

and when do you know silence ?

Consciousness itself is finite. Only a limited number of things can be held in the focus of awareness at one time. To extend ones grasp beyond a mere handful of concretes-to deal with totality-contents have to be compressed in order to economise the units required to convey the content. This is the function of concepts; To reduce a vast amount of information to a minimal number of units. This is not unlike an algorithm used in a modern computer. It is in effect a space saver. In other words conceptualisation is a method of expanding consciousness by reducing the number of its contents units. If one wishes to literally expand consciousness one must improve ones ability to reason by consistent, logical use of the mind. Thinking is a fully active process and has to be practiced consistently and rigorously in order to ensure every integration is as free of error as possible. Like any activity, the more one practices it diligently, the greater the reward. We cannot change the quantity of consciousness but we can improve the quality of consciousness. Those changes are real. We can improve our own qualities. If we are in good health and a safe, stable environment the potential exists in everyone of us to become genius. First we must obey nature and then we can transform nature. There are things we cannot change and things we can. The most important tool we have is our minds and we have an unlimited capacity to improve them. Not by filling them with memorised information but by utilising reason and logic to make the tool more effective, sharper, faster, less error prone, more productive in order that we create the greatest chance of obtaining values which produce the greatest happiness. This is the greatest bliss of all.

I'm quoting myself of course-or myself a few years back. If it's a knowing, then what is it that you know ?