Karl

Milarepa was using the words he had remembered, along with them all the concepts he says he had forgotten. He quite obviously was talking otherwise the words could not have been written. Now, what he says has a smattering of truth. All books- including the one which recorded Milarepa's own words-can be forgotten. There is no need to cling to Milarepa's words anymore than anybody else's. That's why I say to develop the mind sufficiently to act as a high quality filter. There is no need to act according to the Tao, Baghavad Gita, Bible or any other sacred text, philosophy or ideology. It's easier to ignore it all and use the power of reason to determine the closest fit to reality that can be achieved. That you haven't noticed this tells me that you are not discerning in your intake, or arguments. The proof is in your own need to use words, to quote Milerarepa, the words of Milerepa and the text used to record Milarepa. It reeks of hypocrisy and a total ignorance of reality.

It's become feudalistic because we have imposed controls. What applies to the free market applies equally to those we give the authority to apply humanistic control to the market. In other words the market will be entirely dependent on a group of people who are the very types that seek the power to subvert it. The result has been neo feudalism through banks and corporations. The distributed nature of the free market means the lack of centralised authoritarianism means it's easier to eradicate bad actors. The market itself is the best mechanism to control itself, it will grow its own controls and rules because good actors want to gain a reputation in order to maximise income. I think it very much equals the Tao in terms of not trying to apply interventions in order to control it.

Reality is the symbols you write, but the map isn't the territory of course, just abstract representations of concepts. The value of communication is determined by the receiver and not the originator. When do you think you will stop using these silly words ?

Everyone has the choice to sell their labour to the highest bidder. It's fair pay because the transaction is voluntary. It doesn't depend on people being honest or content with their lot. There will always be cheats, however, unlike today the cheats aren't back stopped by the state to the tune of trillions of dollars which essentially robs savers, pensioners and wage earners of the buying power of their honestly obtained earnings. It also stops those already on the earnings ladder, or businesses from protectionism-stopping new competitors entering the market and so earning greater profits from customers, whilst reducing opportunity for everyone who wants to get employment or start a competitive business. In a free market there is no 'system' to manipulate. There are honest dealers and dishonest dealers and both market forces and the law take care to irradicate the latter. Bad actors will find themselves out of business, or up before a court. Companies in the current crony system are promoting war and poverty through their control of the Government and revolving door politics. As long as Governments are prepared to use violence against other states and their own people there will be people cashing in. A free market wouldn't make this worse. Poverty will always be with us. Yet in a free market it is relative poverty and not absolute. In other words even the poor get more wealthy as all wealth increases for everyone. Money should represent the value others place on your services. At present this doesn't happen because the state is printing money, subsidising poor actors and zombie companies. The people who are least valuable are making the most money by robbing everyone else.

Yet you are doing precisely what you are advising others that they shouldn't. If you believed a book to be purely a product of your consciousness, then there would be no requirement for words and yet you are writing words, by which you are attempting to communicate an abstract idea to a group of people who must-by implication- be separate individual identities. If you didn't believe there was value in your communication, or that there were no people ( in your analogy-trees) to whom you could address your thoughts and then judge their responses, then you wouldn't bother writing anything in the first place. Your writing in this blog is an utter condemnation of all the things you hold to be true.

The Tao. It's a stream, don't interfere with its flow.

Even an 'imperfect' semi-free market works better than a market in which the producers are subsidising the failure of business to satisfy customers, or those who refuse to give value. Money is energy. That's the best way to think of it. Then you give and receive energy according to your ability to provide. It's antithetic to a free market to have everyone raised to the same starting point. It's the very opposite. In a free market those with lower skills charge less for services and still participate in giving service.

Sssshhhh! We aren't supposed to know that. :-)

You could love fear and that would be a beginning. That way you get 2 4 1.

Can drowning ?

Easy. It's on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/They-Made-History-Bliss/dp/B006M6A9TI Nice album for the spiritual. A friend of mine I bought a copy for said it saved her life. What could be a better recommendation than that ?

There will be lots of ISIS amongst those refugees. The numbers are 70% men and only 20% Syrian. Pretty much a Pareto split. Can't blame them for escaping the mess that U.S. Foreign policy has created. Once we have the ISIS Trojan horse in Europe we can expect further security clampdowns in our own countries and demands for more intervention abroad. Our leaders have led us into a hell from which they, and the establishment they represent, will extract whatever outcome they have planned for us whilst avoiding any difficulties for themselves.

Depression is completely different. I experienced both conditions and they are unrelated. Those experiences also fit well with the Gurus such a SRM have said to be the case. So either some of us do know, or no one knows. If no one knows then why bother having the discussion ? We might as well discuss the fairies at the bottom of the garden. Awakening and Enlightnment as as natural as puberty. The same confused feelings go along with awakening and enlightenment is the settling down.

What you are describing is awakening- that's how it is, just as you have described, but it isn't enlightenment. After a time you might come down from the high, or bob along going in and out of awakening or stay partying in that state right to the point of enlightenment. It seems variable from person to person. I had a series of these awakenings with periods of post awakening come downs which I had to learn to surf. I did dangerous sports too, so maybe there is a correlation between risk and the height of the awakened experience. Once you have the first fall you will know what I'm talking about. The first crash can be hard. It's like having your voice break though, for some the transition to permanently awakened is seamless. You will discover that awakening is not really much at all, just a natural progression of age like experiencing sexual orgasm, it's all consuming at first, then more humdrum but still desirable. Fir the same reason it's hard to describe orgasm. It also feels like oneness, beyond mind. 'Mind blowing ' is how it is described and in French 'the little death'. It's just a more cerebral version which shows maturation beyond the pure physicality of sex.

I used to get this during the first year of meditation. I remember it being very distracting at the time, but it eventually went away. In AYP parlance it was referred to as 'scenery'. The whistling, bells, music or whatever are also common. The usual advice is not to get too involved with it, carry on with the practices but be ever wary of over loading by grounding and self pacing. Cant really say that this is what you should do, but that was the traditional advice. Tao might be very different, so let that guide you.

You use an emotive term like 'cling' but it doesn't mean anything in this context. Existence and therefore identity is not bounded by thought. Identity exists apart from thought. I don't identify myself as any particular person, I'm simple aware that I have separate, identifiable existence. My thoughts are unique to me and therefore part of that whole, but they do not define my existence. Philosophers have added a whole raft of uncertainty and introduced much error into the way people think of existence. Instead of figuring it out for themselves there is a tendency to incorporate the word of some man who is just as equally confused about why he is here. He didn't figure it out you can be certain of that, but never the less people will put inordinate faith on his words as an authority. Lots of 'idiots' ( in the context of those with unusually poor mental faculty) are very happy individuals, but none would seek to take their place, or replicate whatever damage they have to their cortex.

Except cake.

Interesting question. I believe we have a right and duty to defend ourselves proportionately in whatever way we can. This might be verbally or by violent application of force depending on circumstances. It's true to some extent that those dishing it out are often more miserable than those to whom the are dishing it. The result is that miserable, angry and violent people often become victims of their own actions either passively or actively. If your tormentors have been felled by their own actions then they have ceased tormenting you and as long as you don't carry the burden of that torment as a grudge then things usually work out. You have neither been cause or actor in their misfortune and can be glad and happy they are out of your hair without the slightest guilt.

That made me giggle. Not in any sort of world is that ever going to happen. Excuse the biblical reference, but this was the whole 'garden of Eden' story of man having free will. What you are advocating is a well meaning, but erroneous, command and control structure to force people to adopt a more rational way of being in a 'suitable' environment-but who shall decide what that is ? Only another man with the same issues, it is the blind leading the blind. This is exactly where collectivism and cybernetics comes from-the idea that men can be made better to fit some dedicated purpose and will be happier for it. Any perusal of the communist way of life promised freedom through the use of bondage to the state-an obvious logical error which Orwell called double speak. So, it is what it is and people must be allowed to make their own mistakes as often as they need to make them in order for them to discover things for themselves. We are all exploring and we have to grow from that experience. 'Many paths' it is said and that has to be true.

You are exploring self and so the result of that exploration will be what it will be. It seems to me that Liberty-a freedom from the personally created bindings of ignorance-is sufficient an aim for the moment. Life is what it is. I can't pretend to know the purpose of it. It's funny that you say 'unsatisfactory' as this is exactly what Von Mises says in his work 'human action'. It is this unsatisfactory state which causes us to continually strive for a more satisfactory state and so action occurs towards that state. I suppose I think that I am greatful for this opportunity to live and regard that as a sufficient gift which I will then try and make the most of despite whatever deprivations that come along. One day I will be dead and then it won't matter.

Yes, liberation is not only possible but necessary. As you say it manifests politically for me. I think you will find though, invevitably all things resolve themselves equally by the resolution of the dichotomy and then what will be left is what ever action remains to be carried out. This is grammar-logic-rhetoric or another way perception-understanding-action or input-process-output. For each person I would expect that the action will be very different according to capacity and capability.

Yes there is, that is entirely true. Awareness is the active component of consciousness.

I answered that in reply to CT. There is first an unknowing of the question, then the dichotomy and finally unity. The years spent in the wilderness of the dichotomy seem to be what all philosophers of the spiritual way seem to have done. Be it Jesus with the 40 days and nights, or Buddah under the Bohdi tree there is a period of time after years of searching, in which it all comes together in a matter of weeks.

I'm aware of it because I lived it. I'm also acutely aware that it's impossible to simply throw that switch and for others to know this. Most people I associate with are unaware of the possibility of a false dichotomy in the first place-they haven't found it necessary to ask the question, or have any awareness that the question could exist. I think it is necessary to be curious in order to explore ones own existence in the way people are doing here.

Yes, 'being trapped in the mind'. You said it and created the separation. You are not trapped in the mind, you are your mind and there is no trap. You are looking for a problem that does not and has never existed. You created the idea of 'the separate mind' which is separate from something else that you cannot define as you. You cannot be aware of awareness, or conscious of consciousness. That was all dealt with in some Buddhist writing of 'the eye seeing its own sight'. That's cognitive dissonance. You cannot 'rest' in primordial awareness because it is you that is aware and you must be aware of something. The idea that some other awareness, rests in awareness should be seen for what it is-separation. There is no separation between you and you. :-)