Playing With Perspectives

[UnbornTao]

A Gift to Bring You

[UnbornTao]

Quote

Students today cannot grasp that names and words do not constitute understanding. They copy the words of some old fellow, long dead, into a great book and hold that therein is contained the secret and ultimate, and treasure it at their sacred possession. What a great error! Blind idiots, what juice are they looking for in those dry bones? Such as these do not know good from bad, pore over the meaning of Sutras and Treatises and speculate about them. It is like taking a clod of dung, putting it into one's mouth and spitting it out again, then handing it on to another.

– Rinzai, founder of Rinzai Zen

Edited February 10, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Confronting communication challenges

I wasn't able to communicate to another what I was going through in that situation. I became reactive and resentful and acted out my anger with the intent to hurt the other person involved.

When it comes to this activity, a challenge that frequently comes up for me is feeling stuck in familiar (--interpersonal dynamics, behavior patters--) patterns of relating, no matter how ineffective and unnecessary they are.

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Contrast how much of your interactions are based on reactivity rather than on actual communication.

Also, the difficulty of communication is not that it's particularly hard or complex, but rather its simplicity. Its essence is expressing your experience as it is, without filter.

Contrary to conventional thought, whether your experienced is liked, judged, etc. is irrelevant when it comes to the sharing of it.

Authentic communication is hard to come by. Most of what you listen to is manipulation, even if you like what's being said, aligns with your beliefs and preferences, etc.

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Learning to let pain come up as you interact seems to be essential. Since communication demands opening up and being vulnerable about what you're currently experiencing, expecting pain can make it more difficult. Anticipating another's reaction may make you avoid any kind of confrontation in order to not to get hurt.

Preference, judgment, reaction, etc., are irrelevant in this regard. That said, caution is advised. Depending on context and the person you're interacting with, your experience might not be worth sharing at a given time or situation.

Edited January 30, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

 

[UnbornTao]

What is respect?

As of late I've been noticing that it isn't like the way I hold it.

In our culture, it seems to be held as a necessary formality. However...

Consider subtle forms of disrespect, like not arriving on time. By doing so, what you're telling to another is basically: fuck you, my time is more valuable than yours.

Edited December 29, 2022 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Finally got a computer! All it took was my soul and two kidneys.

Was it worth it? 

 

Edited December 28, 2022 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Picture a recoiling flower.

While experiencing pain, the tendency is to self-contract: to hide, be the victim of, and blame the pain. Rather, I suggest you shift your state to one of self-expansion, in which you welcome and accept the pain instead of trying to avoid or suppress it. This allows for cognizing and understanding what it is, thus opening up the possibility of transcending it. 

Open up to the experience (turn into it), becoming bigger, not smaller than, the pain.

Try this in your experience.

Edited November 28, 2022 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Suffering is primarily caused by your worldview.

How you hold the world, self and life determines your relationship towards them. Depending on how those are defined (by you), that is going to elicit certain dispositions founded upon the worldview's assumptions, which are generally uncognized.

Whether seemingly benign or obvious, what you assume is based on ignorance. 

Edited December 14, 2022 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

 

[UnbornTao]

Quote

"Great minds have purposes, others have wishes. Little minds are tamed and subdue by misfortune; but the great minds rise above them" - Washington Irvin.

Consider that maybe all our reasons are made up, and that there is no reason for anything.

That doesn't undermine the potential value of purpose and meaning.

Whenever I've been happy or loving, if I'm honest, those moments didn't have any reason to justify myself feeling that way. This is not to say that there could be a purpose behind feelings and reasons, though.

You could say, in fancy terms, that reality transcends meaning.

Do things for the hell of it.

Edited December 11, 2022 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Quote

Tokusan was studying Zen under Ryutan. One night he came to Ryutan and asked many questions. The teacher said: "The night is getting old. Why don't you retire?"

So Tokusan bowed and opened the screen to go out, observing:

"It is very dark outside."

Ryutan offered Tokusan a lighted candle to find his way. Just as Tokusan received it, Ryutan blew it out. At that moment the mind of Tokusan was opened.

by Paul Reps from "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones."

Edited December 11, 2022 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Cooking 101

Edited February 17, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

When your listening is founded in a true base of not-knowing, then you have a chance at hearing experientially. 

[UnbornTao]

Quote

It's beautiful to be alone. To be alone does not mean to be lonely. It means the mind is not influenced and contaminated by society.

– Krishnamurti.

[UnbornTao]

Here's a challenge for you: for the next year, do not swear.

If you seriously undertake that practice, you'll eventually begin to notice a lot of hurt previously covered by your expression (of anger). At that point you'll be able to tackle hurt effectively, and be in a better place to ask: What is this feeling? What is it doing? Which purpose is it serving? How does it come to exist?

Edited December 29, 2022 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

The most effective way to learn and master anything is to throw yourself into the work. Teach it. You won't realize the depth and scope of any kind of work by dabbling in, and resisting it. If you're gonna do it, commit to mastering it.

Deeply immerse yourself into your field of interest over a prolonged period of time.

Edited August 9, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

I've taken up authenticity as an operating principle for myself and my life. It isn't always comfortable and is worth the effort. As a practice, it kicks your ass. You become less. Pretty soon your pretension, lies, manipulations, hiding, withdrawal, are burned away by such principle, as if it were a fire that consumed dishonesty. This practice eventually leads to the truth of Being, whatever that is.

It isn't just an easy, intellectual exercise but rather a real, powerful, experience-based discipline.

Authenticity demands that you drop everything in you that is false, inauthentic, phony and fake -- anything that isn't "you."

Whether something is authentic or not is based on your own estimation. Once something is found out to be authentic, dig in, you'll find out even more.  

Edited February 17, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

With lack of integrity, your expression contains a hollow ring to it.

Edited June 11, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

If you don't make decisions deliberately, you'll fall into the default one which often is predetermined by others. Metaphorically speaking, it -- the decision -- catches you due to your complacency. This is done unconsciously.

The operative word here is making; a decision is created.

Learn to make decisions deliberately or you'll make them unconsciously and suffer the consequences.

Edited January 25, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Linux Mint, not Ubuntu, is currently the ideal distro for beginners, imo. Mint unfortunately doesn't support ARM64 so I decided to virtualize the ARM64 Debian Testing build with Cinnamon. So far it's been a seamless, stable experience. Debian is rock solid but contains pretty old packages, which is why I installed from the Testing branch. This build provides one of the latest kernels and much newer packages than the iso offered on the website.

My favorite desktop environments are Cinnamon, KDE and XFCE, in that order. Gnome is probably my least favorite as it feels slow and is resource-intensive (that might have been fixed already in recent versions). Also I'm not a fan of its UI.

Unlike Windows, which I dislike, Linux is free, private, generally stable, extremely customizable, modular and efficient. 

My first custom-made PC will run Mint or another Debian-based distro, and eventually vanilla Debian or Fedora. As a beginner, learning to use Linux and some of its components has been challenging and lots of fun. Mastering it will basically have to become a hobby.

Edited January 23, 2023 by UnbornTao