Playing with Perspectives

[UnbornTao]

Edited 5 hours ago by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Freedom is being able to either do something, or not do it. Successfully fulfilling your self-agenda isn't true freedom. 

Think of emotions such as anger, for instance. Are you able not to do the emotion, or does it seem to come to you?

Edited Friday at 05:10 PM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

 

[UnbornTao]

 

 

Edited Monday at 06:52 PM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Moe regrets:

Edited August 12, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Pick a simple, small object in your vicinity, and then strip away the value, associations, concepts, knowledge, memory, and do on, relative to it. What is there as that when your additions and activities are set aside?

Edited Monday at 06:55 PM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Quote

To his disciples: The people studying Zen nowadays spend all their time on old Zen words and stories, quoting this fellow and citing that one as they deliberate fruitlessly over their koans. Trailing doggedly after other people's words. Feeding on their dregs. Caught in another man's tub, unable to break out into real freedom. They're down in the dark caves, living with the disembodied spirits. You won't find any of those musers or cogitators around here. Here i make people stand absolutely alone and independent right from the start, with their eyes fully open, so they can reach out through all the universe. Each one of the words and sayings uttered by the worthy teachers of the past was given in response to a particular occasion, according to changing conditions - they were trying to stop a child's crying by showing him an empty hand. How could anyone who belongs to the family of Zen have even a single Dharma to preach! If you chase after phrases and get muddled up in words, you're no better off than a man who loses his sword over the side of a ship and then marks the spot where it fell in on the railing.

- Bankei

 

Edited Monday at 06:56 PM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Everything we think, do, say, and feel is a form of manipulation - meaning that it is generated in order to affect conditions. For example: you get angry to protect yourself from the hurt underlying the anger - the purpose of the anger is to manipulate the condition of being hurt. Similarly, in the case of telling a joke, sometimes the purpose might be to get someone to like you - or some other effect. In general, you might adopt ways of acting and relating that are endearing, funny, agreeable--and intimidating, overbearing, demanding, and so on. Can you see the dynamic here?

What something is in itself has no utility for survival. In the context of survival, there is no inherent value in experiencing something for its own sake. Survival is concerned with what something is to me. It's a self-referential perception--a view of things based on how they relate to you, not on what they are in themselves.

What is generated for a purpose is an effect. Affecting equals manipulation. Manipulation occurs as an integral part of one's self-survival. Since it is not simply about what something is in and of itself, it is generated to accomplish an end--to produce a particular effect on the perceived condition. Used this way, it isn't negative or wrong per se.

Etymology of the word: to handle skillfully.

For example, you might recognize that others aren't seeing you the way you'd like to be seen. In response, you may attempt to change that image so the desired effect is achieved.

Can you begin to see the difference, and how it relates to this idea of manipulation?

Now, within the activity of manipulating, we can make two distinctions:

• Direct manipulation: Being straightforward and open about your actions and motives.
• Indirect manipulation: The form commonly viewed as negative--indirect, covert, deceptive, and, generally speaking, socially unacceptable. It involves obscuring one’s motives and misrepresenting one’s true intentions.

Edited 5 hours ago by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

 

[UnbornTao]

I'm enjoying the Foundation show. Highly recommended. Beautiful visuals and scenery. I might read the books at some point. 

Edited Monday at 08:08 PM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

 

Edited September 22, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

You can start taking responsibility for your own thinking, feeling and acting now.

A few superficial manifestations of this principle:

• If I'm overweight, I can start moving and eating healthy.
• If I smoke, I can stop smoking.
• If I feel incapable, I can feel capable
• If I can't focus for long, I can read and meditate consistently
• If I dislike my environment, I can either move or change my disposition
• If I do disempowering shit, I can do functional shit

Edited Friday at 04:12 PM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

 

Edited Monday at 08:12 PM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

What is your experience of suffering when it is embraced, turned into, and felt completely, with no resistance?

Edited Monday at 08:13 PM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Finding Yourself Contemplation

Get at the most real and present sense of yourself that you can. Find you. What comes to mind? Do this now.

Notice that everything that arose came to you. Everything is received by you but are you a perception? Is you perceived? Who is perceiving what came to mind as a result of the above exercise?

Edited Monday at 08:24 PM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

 

[UnbornTao]

Why is an adversarial disposition towards others adopted?

[UnbornTao]

Powerful quote that resonated with me:

Quote

"Pleasure does not provide purpose. Human beings want to collect and pursue
their thousands of pleasures, excitements and mental stimulations, all in
the unseen false assumption that if you collect enough pleasures, they will
somehow harden into purpose. That is, they believe that a hardened mass of
excitements, of things to look forward to, will somehow magically turn into
a reassuring purpose that the individual is heading in the right direction
toward good results. It can never happen.

The pleasures of this world are the pleasures of this world. You can build
a purpose, to be sure, in spending all your time making money and making
plans for your social advancement; but if you call them purpose, call them
a true destination, you will have deceived yourself without realizing it,
because you yourself, the individual himself has placed the word purposeful
life, meaningful life, worthwhile life on his accumulation of pleasures,
and he has lied to himself and he will suffer terribly.

The pleasures that are so freely offered and accepted from the financial
world and the social world and the romantic world, all those pleasures are
lures, temptations sent out to snare the weak and the foolish and the
gullible and the dishonest.

It is now time for you, as a spiritual student, to realize the mistake you
have made in thinking that you can create any kind of a good for yourself,
anything that's satisfying, including a sense of fulfillment, of
destination.

I've asked you to do something that is marvelously daring, that has the
first seed of true purpose in it. I've asked you to be more than
suspicious. I've asked you to ask the question, 'Can anything good come out
of my mind the way it operates now, the level, the low-level that my whole
psychic system operates on? Can anything good come out of that?' No!"

- from a talk given 5/7/1989 by Vernon Howard

 

Edited Monday at 08:26 PM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

 

Edited Monday at 08:31 PM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Reality is continuously giving you feedback on the consequences and appropriateness of your actions. Pay close attention and make corrections when necessary.

Contrary to common belief, being corrected doesn’t make you wrong--quite the opposite! Correction guides you back to appropriate action (which is determined by your purpose). The mistake people make is persisting in doing things "their way" when feedback shows that such an approach isn’t producing the intended results.

You must become increasingly aware of your thinking, feeling, and acting. Ask yourself:

• What is ineffective?
• What works?
• What could be done more powerfully or effortlessly?
• Which principles govern this subject matter?

Edited Monday at 08:48 PM by UnbornTao