OH YE INHERITORS OF IMMORTAL BLISS!

Oh ye Inheritors of Immortal Bliss
what
are You
doing
with This?

Oh ye winners of lottery first prizes
what are your doings
with the winnings?

(Oh ye sinners of unexpected surprises
 what are you trawling up
 with your sinnings?)



NEW PROJECT: DOING

CHOOSING TO MUST

Choosing to must
choosing to can't
choosing to shall
choosing to shan't
choosing to lose
choosing to find
choosing to cruel
choosing to kind
choosing to wise
choosing to fool
choosing to see
choosing to blind
choosing to truth
choosing to lie
choosing to believe
choosing to why?
choosing to live
choosing to die
No!
choosing to die
NO!
choosing to born, choosing to die
choosing to born, choosing to die
choosing to born is choosing to die
choosing to born IS choosing to die
choosing to born IS choosing to die
YES



NEW PROJECT:

Oh ye Inheritors of Immortal Bliss
What
are You
doing
with This?

CHOOSING TO CAN'T

A man is led by two others into a cell. They leave him there and lock the door, taking the key with them.

A man goes into a room, carrying a book. He locks the door behind him and puts the key on the table. Then he sits down, facing the open window, and starts reading.

The first man's mobile phone rings. "Yes, I realise that it is important." He looks at the door. "But I can't come."

The second man's phone rings. "Yes, I realise that it is important." He looks at his book. " But, I'm sorry, I can't come."

The operative word is "choose". If there is choice there is freedom to choose.

Can and can't have nothing to do with it.

If there is freedom to choose, you choose what you want. (Even if you choose to do your duty, it is because that is what you want to do.)

If you choose to can't, it is because you don't want to can. So why not say, "I don't want to"?

In order to avoid accepting responsibility. It is part of the psychological culture of blame.

NEW PROJECT: CHOOSING TO MUST

STRAIGHT STICK, CROOKED STICK

It may be obvious if a stick is crooked or it may not.  It is most obvious if it is set alongside a straight stick. In the physical world there are standard measurements (straight sticks) such as the standard lengths on the wall of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, with which potentially crooked sticks (shopkeepers' measures?) can be compared.

These straight sticks exist in the mental world too.  Variants in English spelling can be referred to the Oxford English Dictionary.

In ethics involving morality and right behaviour, for some people the equivalent of the wall of the Royal Observatory might be Moses' Stone Tablets of the Law.  The equivalent of the Oxford English Dictionary might be the Bible.

Or the Koran.  Or the Vedas.  Or the Avesta.  Or Das Kapital.

There lies the problem.  If there is more than one stick claiming to be straight and they are not identical, the adherents of each will view each of the others as crooked.

The result can only be trouble.  

Today, now, look at the world.  You will see the kind of trouble it leads to.

This is a universally applicable straight stick:

   Avoid Bad

   Cultivate Good

   Purify your Mind

Where

Bad is doing to other beings what you not like them to do to you.

Good is being helpful, kind and considerate.

Purify your mind is understood in the sense of purifying water; where all adulterants are removed, leaving pure water.

NEW PROJECT: CHOOSING TO CAN'T

LET SLEEPING DOGS LIE

When the fires are raging, one doesn't add fuel and the two worlds (the inner and the outer) return to the natural state.

When the dogs of dissension and desire are sleeping, one doesn't stir things up and the world is already cool and quiet.

NEW PROJECT: STRAIGHT STICK, CROOKED STICK

DON'T PUT FUEL ON THE FIRE

Don't put fuel on the fire IF you want the fire to go out.

If it's not dying out, somebody must be! Could it be you?




New Project: 'LET SLEEPING DOGS LIE'

LIFT THE PAINTED VEIL AND SEE THE WORLD!

This completes a cycle of projects.  Lift the painted veil (the mental film of ideas and points of views) and see what the world really looks like.

The world is neutral. We decide that we like this, we don’t like that.

We like the good times, the good experiences.

We don’t like the bad times, the bad experiences: birth, pain, illness, old age, death.

We can’t escape birth, pain, illness, old age, and death.

If we decide “the gain is worth the pain”, we carry on getting born i.e. Acquiring a body so that we can experience these things.

If we decide the gain is not worth the pain, we go about not getting any more bodies, not being born again.

If we can’t make up our minds, we go on getting born and experiencing the good and the bad until we do.

It’s forever either way.

Lift not the painted veil which those who live
Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,
And it but mimic all we would believe
With colours idly spread,--behind, lurk Fear
And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave
Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear.
I knew one who had lifted it ─he sought,
For his lost heart was tender, things to love,
But found them not, alas! nor was there aught
The world contains, the which he could approve.
Through the unheeding many he did move,
A splendour among shadows, a bright blot
Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove
For truth, and like the Preacher found it not.
                                                          —Shelley




New Project: DON'T PUT FUEL ON THE FIRE

WAX FRUIT or REAL FRUIT?

COMMENT:

Coffee or Tea? and Wax Fruit or Real Fruit? are not the same. Coffee or Tea? is offering you a choice.  Wax Fruit or Real Fruit? is not offering you a choice.  It is asking whether what you are looking at now is real fruit or a fake.  There is no choice.  If what you are looking at is a fake, there is no reason why there should be any real fruit somewhere else, for you to choose.  If there seems to be, you would have to examine it.  It may also be a fake.  It may be that all the fruit everywhere, including Heaven, is a fake.  In that case there is no choice.

The "fruit" is the fruit of life, of being born.  Body and Mind.

The body and mind that you are looking at and which you call your own (or maybe yours on loan) is it real?  Or is it a mass of inconvenience and suffering; painful birth, difficult early years when you are wholly dependent on others, ill health, old age (if it lasts that long), and unwanted death (or if wanted, only because the suffering becomes great enough).

Real or fake?  Desirable or undesirable.

What did Buddha say about mind and body (= nama-rupa = the five groups of existence)?

"Whatever there is of material shape, feeling, perception, the habitual (latent) tendencies, consciousness - he (the wise man) considers these things as impermanent, as suffering, as a disease, as an imposthume, as a dart, as a misfortune, as an affliction, as alien, as decay, empty, not-self."

And having seen this, what should he do?

"He turns his mind from these things; and when he has turned his mind from these things he focuses his mind on the deathless element, thinking: ‘This is the real, this the excellent, that is to say the tranquillising of all the activities, the casting out of all clinging, the destruction of craving, dispassion, stopping, Nibbāna."

Source: Mahāmālunkyasutta of Majjhima Nikāya.



New Project: LIFT THE PAINTED VEIL AND SEE THE WORLD!