Where do I sign up?

Have I finally found my path? 

So you wish to become a bliss ninny?

Nirvana can wait

Buddhism in practice? 

The Experience of Jhana at a Goenka retreat center 

Nobody knows nothing

Credits: Fly Navy 

Did some reading on Buddhism over the weekend. OK, so it seems that Buddhists can´t even agree on what the proper form of meditation is?! Nor is it clear what the Buddha really was teaching originally. And yet, meditation is the royal road to nirvana. So the Buddhists don´t really know how to break free of samsaric existence. Yet, that´s the whole *point* of their freakin´ religion, aint it!

Nobody seems to to know anything anymore. It´s all a lie. All of it. All.

Where does that leave us? 

Free to create our own reality? Or should we just jump from a bridge?

Och vad problemet?

Credits: Ghedoghedo

Oklart varför feministerna är arga. Måste bero på att männen inte kallade sig kvinnor officiellt...

"Deckardrottning" fick litteraturpris, var tre män

Vad är straffet? Förlåt, "påföljden"

Credit: Greg Hume

MP vill döma sexköpare för våldtäkt. Jaha. Till samhällstjänst på barnstuga, sex månader, utan fotboja, straffrabatt för alla "under" 18 år. 

Låter som ett slag i luften, men vad vet jag...

"Döm män som köper sex för våldtäkt"

Och varför ska jag bry mig om Einár?

Credit: Pontus Esse Carmback

Var inte Einár kriminell?  

Expressen om Einárs "brokiga bakgrund"

Work of the ages

Credit: AnotherGypsy

Is the Age of Pisces real? Is it the age of grand illusions: Christianity, liberalism, high modernity, the Western Idea of Progress, the invincible nature of modern science? Even the idea that the Age of Aquarius will be even better than the Age of Pisces is itself an illusory piscean idea.

And speaking of the Age of Aquarius...

Traditionally, Aquarius was ruled by Saturn. Hardly a benign jolly little planetoid. Later, Saturn was dethroned in favor of Uranus. But Uranus probably isn´t the shining planet of scientific-spiritual enlightenment it has been made out to be. (I´m assuming here - strictly for the sake of the argument - that astrology is true.) Yes, Uranus is the planet of revolutionary transformation, but it´s also crazy planet. Isn´t this what´s actually happening in the world today?

We live through a revolutionary transformation in which everyone is stark raving mad, or at the very least very ironic (all this is Uranus) and this transformation is the inevitable fated result of our karma (Saturn). Yes, the Age of Aquarius is ruled by both these planets in tandem. 

Welcome to CLOWN WORLD and MADHOUSE EARTH c/o the Lord of Karmic Consequence! 

In 2000 years, Uranus will be dethroned as Saturn rules alone during the long night of the Age of Capricorn. Everything will be hard toil, dark, damp, materialist, and yet nevertheless somehow weirdly efficient. The only humor will be sardonic laughter at the follies of the two preceding world ages. Only around the year 6000 will human civilization move upward again, after a fashion, as Jupiter takes over in the Age of Sagittarius.

Or perhaps we´ll all be dead by then, the real Sagittarians being highly evolved whales, happy to finally get rid of their foremost natural enemy...  

I think we found the culprit

Copyright: Antony McCallum

I think we found the root of our present predicament. And no, it´s not the bloke on the picture above! It´s an altogether different guy...

Matthew 5:38-44 

>>>Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;>>>

Was Jesus mad, bad or God? If these are the actual words of Jesus, I´d say he was mad. "Love thy quislings as yourself and win the Darwin Award" is such good advice to Western man (or woman, or any human) in the year 2021. Right? 

And no, Jesus isn´t talking about other Christians (other Christians were erring brothers, not enemies), he wasn´t talking about ascesis (he preached the Sermon on the Mount to "the multitude" which isn´t called upon to be ascetics), nor did he take the position that you don´t have to forgive unrepentant sinners (an argument I often heard from Christians).

Here´s a scary idea: what if Jesus says what he means and means what he says? Now, go out and apply his principles to grooming gangs, terrorists, Antifa rioters, the Deep State, the SJWs cancelling your sweet little ass, the politicians serving them...

Right.

Perhaps the world needs more paganism, after all. But sure, we could compromise and create a paganizing form of Christianity, if you like that better!

But love our enemies? Show agape to unrepentant sinners?

Nupe. 

 

Why compare?

Somebody else entirely 

"Can Humanity Change? J. Krishnamurti in Dialogue with Buddhists" is a book containing the transcripts of several discussions between Jiddu Krishnamurti and a Buddhist scholar from Sri Lanka, Walpola Rahula. A few other people, most notably David Bohm, also participate in the exchanges, which took place in 1978-79 at Brockwood Park in England. The conservations are also available free of charge on the YouTube channel of the Krishnamurti Foundation ("J. Krishnamurti - Official Channel"). The videos contain funny details obviously not seen in the book, such as the presence of teenage girls or bearded hippies in the audience! It´s also fun to watch the often bewildered expressions of Rahula and Bohm as they try to follow the meandering expositions of Krishnamurti. 

It seems Rahula had sort-of-challenged Krishnamurti to a debate on Buddhism, since both the Lankan scholar and other Buddhists had noted strong similarities between K´s message and that attributed to the Buddha. I think Rahula was right in this. Krishnamurti´s message could indeed be seen as a modernized version of Buddhism, Zen Buddhism in particular. Radical Buddhism could be another way of putting it. Or Zen without motorcycle maintenance? Of course, the anti-guru Krishnamurti refuses to be pidgeon-holed liked this, and retorts to the suggestion that he has a Buddhist-sounding message with the question "Why compare?". To which Rahula has no real answer. Krishnamurti also shrewdly asks the scholar why Buddhist rituals, techniques and dogmas aren´t "conditioned", if everything else in samsara is conditioned? Indeed, Rahula is often forced to concede that Krishnamurti may be right, making the entire "debate" feel somewhat pointless...

Still, there probably is a genuine disagreement in there somewhere. To Krishnamurti, enlightenment must be spontaneous and instantaneous, otherwise it is nothing. No "process", thinking or evolution in time can be involved. Every theory *about* enlightenment leads away from it, by conditioning the mind and erecting further barriers between it and the goal. Indeed, even the idea that enlightenment is a goal, something to be sought or attained, is in itself a step away from it! Obviously, rituals or dogmas are obstacles to liberation. Rahula (and Bohm) finds this hard to accept, or even comprehend. To Rahula, there is an evolution from conditioned existence towards the enlightened state of the arhat, at least within our "relative time" or "relative truth" (he often sounds "Mahayanish" despite presumably being a Theravadin). 

His favorite simile is that the Buddha´s teaching is like a boat taking somebody across a river (the river being samsara). The boat can be destroyed only after the passenger has safely reached the other shore. Krishnamurti questions this - to coin a simile of mine own, it´s as if he wants us to jump across the river in one gigantic stride! But perhaps K would have preferred a different simile: we are already at the other side of the river, but don´t realize it since we have our eyes closed. The only thing we have to do is open them... A simile he does use is that of seeing a snake and instantly realizing that its dangerous, recoiling from it. In the same way, but positively, enlightenment must be an instant realization of a *fact*, not some pretty theory or dogma about some or the other. 

What´s less clear is what method (if any) Krishnamurti proposed to reach this goal (or not-reach the non-goal). Perhaps his meandering "inquiries" *are* the method? Clearly, the World Teacher wasn´t very succesful! This is most obvious in the section "Life After Death", where K goes on and on for over an hour, arguing points everyone really seems to agree with, and which could have been dispensed with in under 15 minutes. He also seems to deliberately create confusion by contradicting himself, use familiar words in a strange way, and so on. It´s almost as if he goes out of his way to sound special (despite constantly claiming the opposite), rather than just being another basic Buddhist. 

Even if we assume that the Buddha originally had a message like Krishnamurti, Buddha (or his disciples) must have realized that it´s essentially impossible to impart to ordinary mortals, and hence developed new "processes" (and dogmas) to bring people closer to the goal. You could also question K in a much more radical way: what if his non-goal isn´t just impossible, but also undesirable? The answer to the question "Can Humanity Change?" would then be "Probably not" followed by a "Thank goodness"!  

Another twilight of industrial capitalism declared

No, I won´t read "The Age of Surveillence Capitalism" by Shoshana Zuboff, and the hype surrounding the book makes me wanna read it even less. First, who is Shoshana? Why haven´t we heard about her before? Why is her Wiki page so incomplete? And why does she look like a "he"? And no, we don´t live in a new era of neo-neo-capitalism blah blah. Nix. I´m old enough to remember the bunk about "post-Fordism" from the 1980´s. And it was probably same old, same old even back then. (Insert angry Marxist polemic against Eduard Bernstein here.) 

I´m also old enough to remember "the most important book of the 21st century" (or was it ever) during the 00´s. I think it was called "Empire", but I no longer remember the names of the authors. Some kind of Italianate blokes. And during the 2010´s, it was Naomi Kline or whatever. Who today remember them, or write extensively about their ideas? Nobody, of course. Oh, and what happened to David Korten? (Koresh?)

These are (of course) some kind of leftists or leftish liberals. But "the most important book EVER" is also a common trope on the right, or among spiritual people. I have no idea what books the right-wingers have considered the Messiah of the Millennium, but I´m old enough to remember the most important books ever on the spiritual side. Or at least their authors. If we backtrack in time, I believe it was Eckhart Tolle, Ken Wilber and James Redfield. Oh, and now I realized who is the right-wing icon. Why, it´s Jordan Petersen, of course! 

And know what? Nothing came out of that, either. 

In ten years time, Shoeshine Anna will be just as forgotten as these guys are today. Capitalism and the working class will still be around. Without making any revolution. Prompting yet another "innovative" theory further down the road. And so it will continue, until The Great Meteor will finally put us out of our misery altogether.

I sense a best seller coming up!