The full price to be paid

[3bob]

"Only Nothing can enter into no space" TTC. 43

 

although smelling the roses on the way is part of the game...

Edited December 20, 2013 by 3bob

[ThisLife]

"Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn't it such a relief to have somebody say that?"

Kurt Vonnegut

[Marblehead]

although smelling the roses on the way is part of the game...

That's why I get lost all the time. Constantly taking the side paths in order to smell the roses.

[ChiDragon]

"Only Nothing can enter into no space" TTC. 43

 

although smelling the roses on the way is part of the game...

TTC 43

3. 無 有 入 無 間 ，

3. Formless(Tao) enters non-space.

[3bob]

Chi Dragon, Thanks for the alternate translation

[Stosh]

"Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn't it such a relief to have somebody say that?"

 

Kurt Vonnegut

Vonnegut has a bummer attitude. Melville , my favorite , did not. and while i realize it can be a relief to know that you arent the only one experiencing difficulty.. its just as depressing (and wrong) to be led to believe that there is no good life liveable.

[ThisLife]

Vonnegut has a bummer attitude. Melville , my favorite , did not. and while i realize it can be a relief to know that you arent the only one experiencing difficulty.. its just as depressing (and wrong) to be led to believe that there is no good life liveable.

 

I can readily understand why you feel the way you do about Kurt Vonnegut. He, too, was fully aware of his own, 'bummer attitude'. In his first novel, "Cat's Cradle", he wrote " My second wife left me on the grounds that I was too pessimistic for an optimist to live with."

 

For me, the experience he is referring to is one shared by all of us,.... because aren't we all 'mentally trapped' within our own personality in an analogous way to how we are each 'physically trapped' within our own body.? It's tied up with that interesting question of whether we really do have any freedom to 'be' other than we are, or to 'do' other than we are doing,... at every moment.

 

For me, Vonnegut's pessimism is kind of adds a 'flavour' to literature that wakens up my tastebuds. I don't think I've ever come across another author with quite such a bizarre, witty, yet incisive viewpoint. Nevertheless, like any spice, his way of looking at the world simply 'part of' a much wider meal, created by many other writers, friends, teachers, family,... in the end, every experience that my life has brought me up to this moment in time.

 

I can only imagine that this experience must be true for you as well. Though you have expressed your personal affection for Melville, I doubt he is the sole author you read, or the only contribution to your current world view. He too, is most probably simply one flavour among many that you enjoy. Even if he may well be your 'main man.'

 

To give you a better example, (by using his own words), of what I think of as Vonnegut's unique genius, I'll add the rest of the quote from which I extracted my earlier comment about his pessimism. {Only, can I say in advance that I am NOT on a 'Vonnegut conversion trip' ? I just enjoy the spice of his viewpoint. Quotes like this are simply done the way most of us pass around internet jokes. It's just an attempt to spread a bit of light-hearted fun} :

 

*

 

*

 

 

During my trip to Ilium and to points beyond - a two-week expedition bridging Christmas - I let a poor poet named Sherman Krebbs have my New York City apartment free. My second wife had left me on the grounds that I was too pessimistic for an optimist to live with.

 

Krebbs was a bearded man, a platinum blonde Jesus with spaniel eyes. He was no close friend of mine. I had met him at a cocktail party where he presented himself as National Chairman of Poets and Painters for Immediate Nuclear War. He begged for shelter, not necessarily bomb proof, and it happened that I had some.

 

When I returned to my apartment… I found it wrecked by a nihilistic debauch. Krebbs was gone; but before leaving, he had run up three-hundred-dollars’ worth of long-distance calls, set my couch on fire in five places, killed my cat and my avocado tree, and torn the door off my medicine cabinet.

 

He wrote this poem, in what proved to be excrement, on the yellow linoleum floor of my kitchen:

 

I have a kitchen

But it is not a complete kitchen

I will not be truly gay

Until I have a

Dispose-all.

 

There was another message, written in lipstick in a feminine hand on the wallpaper over my bed. It said: "No, no, no, said Chicken-licken."

 

There was a sign hung around my dead cat’s neck. It said “Meow.”

…

 

I might have been vaguely inclined to dismiss the stone angel as meaningless, and to go from there to the meaninglessness of all. But after I saw what Krebbs had done, in particular what he had done to my sweet cat, nihilism was not for me.

 

Somebody or something did not wish me to be a nihilist. It was Krebbs’s mission, whether he knew it or not, to disenchant me with that philosophy. Well done, Mr. Krebbs, well done.

 

*

Edited December 23, 2013 by ThisLife

[Marblehead]

... nihilism was not for me.

 

Somebody or something did not wish me to be a nihilist.

Albert Camus didn't want you to be a Nihilist.

[Stosh]

I can readily understand why you feel the way you do about Kurt Vonnegut. He, too, was fully aware of his own, 'bummer attitude'. In his first novel, "Cat's Cradle", he wrote " My second wife left me on the grounds that I was too pessimistic for an optimist to live with."

 

For me, the experience he is referring to is one shared by all of us,.... because aren't we all 'mentally trapped' within our own personality in an analogous way to how we are each 'physically trapped' within our own body.? It's tied up with that interesting question of whether we really do have any freedom to 'be' other than we are, to 'do' other than we are doing,... at every moment.

 

For me, Vonnegut's pessimism is kind of adds a 'flavour' to literature that wakens up my tastebuds. I don't think I've ever come across another author with quite such a bizarre, witty, yet incisive viewpoint. Nevertheless, like any spice, his way of looking at the world simply 'part of' a much wider meal, created by many other writers, friends, teachers, family,... in the end, every experience that my life has brought me up to this moment in time.

 

I can only imagine that this experience must be true for you as well. Though you have expressed your personal affection for Melville, I doubt he is the sole author you read, or the only contribution to your current world view. He too, is most probably simply one flavour among many that you enjoy. Even if he may well be your 'main man.'

 

To give you a better example, (using his own words), of what I think of as Vonnegut's unique genius, I'll add the rest of the quote from which I extracted my earlier comment about his pessimism. {Only, can I say in advance that I am NOT on a 'Vonnegut conversion trip' ? I just enjoy the spice of his viewpoint. Quotes like this are simply done the way most of us pass around internet jokes. It's just an attempt to spread a bit of light-hearted fun} :

 

*

 

*

 

 

During my trip to Ilium and to points beyond - a two-week expedition bridging Christmas - I let a poor poet named Sherman Krebbs have my New York City apartment free. My second wife had left me on the grounds that I was too pessimistic for an optimist to live with.

 

Krebbs was a bearded man, a platinum blonde Jesus with spaniel eyes. He was no close friend of mine. I had met him at a cocktail party where he presented himself as National Chairman of Poets and Painters for Immediate Nuclear War. He begged for shelter, not necessarily bomb proof, and it happened that I had some.

 

When I returned to my apartment… I found it wrecked by a nihilistic debauch. Krebbs was gone; but before leaving, he had run up three-hundred-dollars’ worth of long-distance calls, set my couch on fire in five places, killed my cat and my avocado tree, and torn the door off my medicine cabinet.

 

He wrote this poem, in what proved to be excrement, on the yellow linoleum floor of my kitchen:

 

I have a kitchen

But it is not a complete kitchen

I will not be truly gay

Until I have a

Dispose-all.

 

There was another message, written in lipstick in a feminine hand on the wallpaper over my bed. It said: "No, no, no, said Chicken-licken."

 

There was a sign hung around my dead cat’s neck. It said “Meow.”

…

 

I might have been vaguely inclined to dismiss the stone angel as meaningless, and to go from there to the meaninglessness of all. But after I saw what Krebbs had done, in particular what he had done to my sweet cat, nihilism was not for me.

 

Somebody or something did not wish me to be a nihilist. It was Krebbs’s mission, whether he knew it or not, to disenchant me with that philosophy. Well done, Mr. Krebbs, well done.

 

*

Yeah , Vonneguts writing is interesting and I did like it ,( I read most of his stuff , when I was a a teenager), I dont think it helped me though , it encouraged my wry attitude and propensity for sarcasm.. but if a person was feeling the pinch of a drab mental rut, well then maybe the material would be of greater impact. I especially like that you are including an atypical author in a post. Yeah Melville is a main-man writer for me , stories like Omoo describe unpretentious attitudes and cannibals, Moby Dick outlines the differences between the critial logical vs the spritual nature of us all,, and his writing just strikes a chord which has made me think more about the subject, rather than become disenchanted . But then again I liked Kon-tikki too so I may just be biased.

Edited December 23, 2013 by Stosh

[ThisLife]

Hiya Stosh,

 

Thanks very much for your thought-provoking reply. You seem to have filled in a missing brick in my long-running 'love affair' with Vonnegut's writing when you wrote :

 

"Yeah , Vonneguts writing is interesting and I did like it ,( I read most of his stuff , when I was a a teenager), I dont think it helped me though , it encouraged my wry attitude and propensity for sarcasm.. but if a person was feeling the pinch of a drab mental rut, well then maybe the material would be of greater impact."

 

Yes, perhaps he has also, 'less-than-beneficially', encouraged my own tendencies to a "wry attitude and propensity for sarcasm."

 

Anyway, I think that anything which, (even if only temporarily), derails the complacency of our comfortably habitual train of thought,... offers us the space to actually think about something differently before our mind quickly performs its inbuilt 'damage control' function, fills in that 'troublesome gap', and gets us chugging along again in unruffled complacency again.

 

I now owe you five minutes of freed mind space.

 

Thanks

Edited December 23, 2013 by ThisLife

[Stosh]

Most folks think I have far too much free mind space , but thanks. Ill look forward to it.

[ThisLife]

Most folks think I have far too much free mind space , but thanks. Ill look forward to it.

 

If you too think that this may be a problem, there's a host of soap operas running almost continuously on daytime television, that were created for PRECISELY this purpose. Innocuous ballast for the mind.

[soaring crane]

Yeah Melville is a main-man writer for me , stories like Omoo describe unpretentious attitudes and cannibals, Moby Dick outlines the differences between the critial logical vs the spritual nature of us all,, and his writing just strikes a chord

 

I wonder what KV thought about HM

[Stosh]

I wonder what KV thought about HM

He didnt have the same style of course but I read that he quoted from Moby Dick ,,as well as the bible ,which may just indicate he was willing to tap into literary tradition that he personally didnt write, or that he had some affinity for the works.

 

While Ahab is a pivotal character , Ishmael is the primary protagonist and so Ahabs misfortune ,isnt as central, as the speculative observation of Life that is Ishmael's. Vonnegut may have read that differently and paid too much attention to Ahab.

Edited December 23, 2013 by Stosh

[Stosh]

If you too think that this may be a problem, there's a host of soap operas running almost continuously on daytime television, that were created for PRECISELY this purpose. Innocuous ballast for the mind.

Thats an interesting opinion ! Are soap operas innocuous ? For many the most obsessive perspective of their own lives is the social aspect of it. Viewers get to consider their own reactions , emphasize their opinion on the events , judge yet not be judged. Between that , pro wrestling, and Sean Hannity etc Im not sure who the worst role models are. What would be noxious in comparison?

Edited December 23, 2013 by Stosh

[dawei]

"Only Nothing can enter into no space" TTC. 43

 

Dao, not being anything but rather nothing cannot enter anything else...

 

As it is potential, it transforms anything. Thus it 'joins with' in the sense that an umbrella once opens can be said that the arm transforms [causes the arising of] the umbrella cover. It has joined with its arising.

[TzuJanLi]

Greetings..

 

Existence is actually happening, we can be present for it, unconditionally alive and alert, paying attention to what is real.. or, we can think what we think is real, we can believe our imagined beliefs and twaddle over the words of others or.. we can find our own authentic words, through our own authentic experiences, rather than reliving other people's second-hand experiences..

 

Nice umbrella.. does it work? does it keep the rain off you?

 

Be well..

[dawei]

Nice umbrella.. does it work? does it keep the rain off you?

 

As it was a metaphor, your question is as:

 

Nice Dao.... does it work? Does it keep the arising off you?

 

No... we are all a part of it. We all join in together; As One. NO distinctions need to be made.

[TzuJanLi]

Greetings..

As it was a metaphor, your question is as:

 

Nice Dao.... does it work? Does it keep the arising off you?

 

No... we are all a part of it. We all join in together; As One. NO distinctions need to be made.

No, the question had nothing to do with your metaphor.. i was admiring the umbrella, but noticing that you seem to be wet.. wondering why the fanfare didn't seem to work..

 

No distinctions will get you killed in heavy traffic, best to just pay attention.. too much 'thinking' about thinking/Tao will distract you from not thinking/clarity..

 

Be well..

[dawei]

Greetings..

No, the question had nothing to do with your metaphor.. i was admiring the umbrella, but noticing that you seem to be wet.. wondering why the fanfare didn't seem to work..

 

No distinctions will get you killed in heavy traffic, best to just pay attention.. too much 'thinking' about thinking/Tao will distract you from not thinking/clarity..

 

Be well..

 

Walking in metaphors and walking in heavy traffic are not the same... and yet the same. I think one know the difference when it is needed... and not needed. On TTB, it is all foreplay.

[3bob]

Dawei,

 

Full agreement on or with the word usage of "transform". Further, the transformation/flow works both ways as in "going far" and in the "return". (yet in also knowing Itself as "standing still" everywhere at once!)

 

similar in meaning to Holy Om

Edited December 24, 2013 by 3bob

[Marblehead]

Eureka!!!!!

 

Finally I realize why I do not accept the concept of simultaneous arising. It really is a Buddhist concept!!!

[3bob]

Happy Eureka !!! MH