Friday 3 April 2015



gesshin balks at " equivalence "

32 comments:

  1. Yeah, I've learned a lot from you, and I do think you had a genuine vision.

    Problem is most people can't be perfect. I won't lie however... I did up my game and perspective of the Infinite by frequenting this blog and reading your poems.

    There is a perennial aspect to the way you approach wisdom and contemplating that most people aren't willing to accept. I feel the reason I can understand you is because I had powerful visions of looking at the golden luminescence shining through my window as a kid. There was a kind of impersonal, lifting aspect to it of some sort.

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    1. basically a vision can be more real than real life and that's what people never can get . . ! ¡

      a good play can be like that, like sir henry neville's ‘ the tempest ’ !

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    2. A meta-analysis of studies done from 1970s to 2012 revealed that the brain reacts to stimuli before they happen. Our brain is able to anticipate the future to some degree. It's not some BS, it's real science:

      http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3971164/

      Read the conclusions at the bottom:

      • PAA, the predictive physiological anticipation of a truly randomly selected and thus unpredictable future event, has been under investigation for more than three decades, and a recent conservative meta-analysis suggests that the phenomenon is real.

      • Neither QRP, expectation bias, nor physiological artifacts seem to be able to explain PAA.

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      How is this connected to visions?

      Well, there is a whole field now called quantum biology. So quantum weirdness exists at the biological level too, and not just as the subatomic level like I assumed before. Suddenly, things like premonition or visions that seemed laughable decades ago, are now seriously studied by scientists.

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    3. (Or at least should be; seriously considered... this doesn't mean superstitions, palm-reading, crystal balls and al that riffraff suddenly stops being ludicrous... It just means, I guess... that in the future a major reconstruction of what is assumed to be "real" will have to emerge... either civilization will learn to process this "weirdness" in a sane fashion or it will be used by cults to create narratives and movements that will trigger mass psychosis!)

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    4. My question to Andrew (and to Sepehr, too) though, is : what is the difference between a vision and a dream? Is it the way it affects the person? Is a vision more transformative than a dream? Or is it more real? But what is unreal about dreams? That we wake up from them? So does a vision never end? And if it ends, why is it more real than a dream? Is the difference that one is displayed while we sleep, and the other while we're awake? Is that an essential difference though? In that case, the vision would simply be a daydream, a very lucid day dream. Or is the whole question of the reality of the event irrelevant, and the important thing is only the content of the vision? But in that case, dreams are full of interesting content, too, and why is the dream-content less worth than the vision-content?

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    5. zakaj, physiologically, dreams are an artifact of sleep, that is the brain is in a shut down state undergoing re-organization/reinforcing of memories and is repairing and no doubt other things . .

      visions i think are in some quasi undefinable state that is not really anything but able to access the whole brain

      that is why i think that dreams are largely meaningless and visions are n o t ! : o ) (

      experience shows this though sepehr did post some dreams that seemed meaningful, i do think his brain is remaining more concious that it should be for sleep and also that he seemed not to have worked these insights into his waking understanding . .

      in short his visionary state was not strictly s l e e p, yet retained some of the limitations of it . . !

      the most surprising thing for me about mystical expereinces is the number of people who get very deep but narrow insights that are so uneven or unintegrated into the rest of their thinking/themselves as to make me wonder how that can happen . !

      as a side note i don't think drugs generate "correct" visionary states because they are too mechanistically biological . . !

      reddit is full of that sort of idiot . . for sure !

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    6. How is the phenomenon you describe, the phenomenon of vision, related to what the Dharmic religions refer to as "samadhi"? (And or (the) dhyana(s) or jhana(s)?)

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    7. well you are treating those "concepts" as being real and having utility, but in fact are they not voynich, that is misleading nonsense designed to trap the unwary ! ?

      abandon the collective and embrace the solipsistic !

      :

      o

      )

      !

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    8. The text attributed to the Sixth Patriarch is full of references to samadhi. Was it tampered with? Which parts are genuine? And if nothing is genuine, why do we even care about him, since the texts about him is the reason we care about him in the first place?

      You haven't abandoned the Sixth Patriarch and thus the linage of Zen. That lineage is a product of the collective. You could have said "fuck you, I don't want your robe" to the old man. Instead you accepted the vision and announced it to the world (to the collective).

      When Gautama Buddha was born, he is said to proclaim that "Above the Heavens and below the Heavens, I alone am the World-Honoured One!" Yun-men commented on this story by saying, "If I had been with him at the moment of his uttering this, I would surely have struck him dead with one blow and thrown the corpse into the maw of a hungry dog."

      When the Sixth Patriarch was before you in the vision, you could have told him: "In Heaven and on Earth I alone am the World-Honored One." - Instead of embracing the solipsistic, you opted for the collective! Even in the vision you remained a conformist!

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    9. I think it makes more sense to treat the Platform Sutra as advice and not dogma. The Yampolsky translation does a better job than Red Pine's showing the union between contemplation and wisdom, preferably in solitude. The Platform Sutra seemed more like a defense on how wisdom can naturally arise from contemplative time in solitude in natural scenery... it wasn't really a text that told you how things are... Rather it deconstructed your perspective of what you think things are by saying, "Hey, if you want to know how things, just get some solitude & contemplative time, and naturally a wisdom will emerge." So it's not really a text that dictates on what you'd ought to believe, but moreso to get your own original creativity.

      An3drew is going a step further by saying celibacy is needed too, and I think he is right. Celibacy is indeed more conducive for such an apprehension which indeed has some depth to it. I think Hui Neng would concur too in that regard.

      I think the problem is you won't move more towards a Deleuzian or Derridean dialectic, Zakaj. I think Henri Bergson and Deleuze was onto something too because both emphasized the importance of creativity. The way creativity manifests itself when contemplative/wisdom (in solitude) unify has some kind of transcendental aspect to it that terse speaking just can't really touch, hence the use of responding to koans or poems with another spontaneous koan or poem of one's own creation, etc.

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    11. The point I'm making can be summed up simply: are you speaking from the wisdom that naturally arises from the unification of contemplation and wisdom in solitude within natural scenery OR are you speaking from your interpretations of concepts? If it's the former, what you have to say is important, but if it is the latter, then it is voynich.

      This the 7th Zen patriarch, An3drew, message... but he adds 2 or 3 new things:

      1) watch your nutrition because otherwise your brain will be too impaired to take in that sweet solitude or the song of birds

      2) don't get involved in relationship dramas with clinging to male/female paradigm - better to be celibate and not deal with the flux of a woman's desires

      3) read good poetry or engage in reading/watching quality artwork, otherwise you'll just be inane

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    12. zakaj, the thing about the sixth patriarch is authentic understanding is so rare, it's very very special !

      in the whole of the zen tradition there's literally only a handful with that understanding, for instance joshu fully understands while huang-po and even dogen do not, tho dogen is better than
      huang-po !

      the platform sutra may have been written about 780ad, 70 years after the sixth patriarch's death and may or may not be representative to some degree of what the sixth patriarch said, at the least it's either distorted or garbled, but somewhere in there is an authentic voice . .

      however if you notice its tone, it's the usual preacher trying to give some coherence or make sense of the complete nonsense that conventional religion and understanding is, its a constant reintepretation . .

      what does he mean by samadhi in the sutra ? dissociation or/and ' formless absorption ' ! ?

      that is, he is trying to give coherence to a commonly used concept . .

      your approach is flawed, you don't come from an inner coherence and try to spill a little sense in an insane world, rather you grab a garbage voynich concept and fling it around spilling effluent like it means something !

      a lot of william blake's work was this "re-interpretion" of the christian garbage . . whether his time would have better spent doing something else is an open question . .

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    13. Sepehr; I think you are reading the 7th Patriarch into the Platform Scripture. Hui Neng in that text never mentions any natural scenery

      "how wisdom can naturally arise from contemplative time in solitude in natural scenery"

      Did you watch Amongst White Clouds? A contemplative is asked if it helps to live in nature to develop wisdom; he answers "nature is delusion; delusion is nature" - this coming from someone who lives in nature, someone who unlike us doesn't post on the Internet etc.!

      The Platform Scripture, far from suggesting we should live in a hut in a forest, tells us to just stay home! "The Master said, "Good Knowing Advisors, if you wish to cultivate, you may do so at home. You need not be in a monastery. If you live at home and practice, you are like the person of the East whose mind is good. "

      And then in verses:

      "A red-petalled lotus can surely spring from mud.
      Good medicine is bitter to the taste.
      Words hard against the ear must be good advice.
      Correcting failings gives birth to wisdom.
      Why toil outside in search of the profound?"

      Whoever wrote the Platform Scripture is suggesting there's no need to find some perfect natural scenery, but you can practice right from your home! It is more about integrating criticism ("bitter medicine") - for instance, you are at home and reading Andrew's critiques, that is already practice according to the Platform Sutra. It is true progress. Do you think if an oak tree was present the situation would improve?

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    14. "your approach is flawed, you don't come from an inner coherence and try to spill a little sense in an insane world, rather you grab a garbage voynich concept and fling it around spilling effluent like it means something !"

      Right; I do not come from inner coherence. I(t) come(s) from incoherence, contradiction. There are certain gaps... in the structure of time; there are contradictions in the linearity of (my) experience. There is the presence of something impossible, contradictory. The term "samadhi" (and other terms from the tradition) is something I experimentally use to possibly signify it, it is not something I pretend to use as if it made complete sense from my experience.

      Why keep the connection to the Zen tradition? this is my question to you. The Zen tradition in a specific historical development supposedly from India, but it might as well be a Chinese invention. Anyway - it is a connection to our history. It is not solipsistic. You are not claiming to be God. You are not claiming that a cosmic entity like Variocana has selected you to be its messenger. You are saying a specific historical person who was born and lived in China has contacted you. A person who walked this earth, who ate, slept, defecated, flesh and bones.

      UG is more solipsistic. He's quite rude too, doesn't let people speak, doesn't even listen to others, just keeps repeating himself like a broken record without acknowledging the Other. He doesn't care about tradition, he calls Zen masters "disgusting bastards", etc. You listen to others, you study the tradition, you separate good from bad in literature, so you are quite different. What function am I serving in your solipsistic experience? What function are you serving in my solipsistic exp?

      I am not willing to dismiss the Sutras and the religion of the Dharma; I believe the intelligence that wrote the Sutras is basically the same as Yunmen's intelligence that pisses on the Sutras; it is the same intelligence that writes Sutras and pisses on them. That intelligence is not someone's. Not even God's or Buddha's. It seems to emerge in our absence. Even more, I believe there is not many books, not many poems, not many essays. There is just the one, the one text, that keeps rewriting itself endlessly. The Lotus Sutra is perhaps one of the most successful attempts, then there are poems, koans, etc. Then there is Sepehr's play, supposedly one of the best attempts in many kalpas. Then there are my comments that lack inner coherence.

      But there are not many poems, there is just the one, rewriting itself endlessly. "Bad poems" are also the one poem, more carefully hidden. How could there be two? There are no two skies, so how could there be two poems?

      The Voynich Manuscript and the Lotus Sutra are basically one single text, just like your poems and Sepehr's play, and my comments, and the koans. My comments are the ugliest parts of that unitary text perhaps - but still they're not separate from it. They are in the truth. I am already in the truth. Thinking we are excluded from the truth is the greatest untruth. The only untruth.

      Like a multidimensional "space" folded unto itself floats there the one text:

      http://mesosyn.com/mental7-3t.png

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    15. I should stop posting again - I am censoring myself from now on. For at least 4 months. This is your house, and I don't want to waste your time. I am obviously going in a different direction, one that is more inclusive of illusion, even of Voynich!

      So I'll be silent at least until August!

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    16. zakaj, comment or no comment !: o) (

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws1-hN4DZtk

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  2. Zakaj, I reached a dead-end with my play. I need solitude in natural scenery preferably in NC...

    Basically I'm saying I need a kind of retreat without computers for a bit... just reading and also finishing my play.

    I have the outline completed and 1/3rd of it practically done, but I don't have that "tingly sensation" on my forehead and the feeling of my body being suffused in some blinding electricity while writing it anymore. It's because I went back to voynich, and I don't like writing when I don't get that sanggi / chi or whatever in my forehead... it's like a melting cathartic experience while watching or reading good art or writing good art. When it's not there, the writing becomes stale and lifeless.

    Kusan Sunim talked about it a bit:

    https://books.google.com/books?id=4CR5HPE_EjAC&pg=PT71&lpg=PT71&dq=sanggi+kusan+sunim&source=bl&ots=zqJf-bhvPa&sig=BGZWHoGjF-tt1H-AuP568fuJb0E&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xOciVbfZEMWrNpbsgBA&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=sanggi%20kusan%20sunim&f=false

    It's not so much an ache as it is a swelling up of some kind of mysterious energy i can't put into words. you get it while reading good poetry or watching good film too...

    you never ever get it with entertainment crap i think

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  3. Zephyr, have you considered sticking a fork in an electric outlet? That might provide the necessary inspiration.

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    1. I have done transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in the past. It's actually pretty good.

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  4. here's a picture taken by my cousin of where i'd spend a month most summers as a kid

    http://imgur.com/XyxUATg

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    1. looks lovely, whereabouts is that ? that's a very long stone wall ! : o )

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    2. the wall is the neighbor's.

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  5. Andrew, what do you mean by "abandon the collective and embrace the solipsistic !"?

    I can't tell if I'm interpreting it correctly or not. Aren't you just saying we are forever alone? How is being alone equivalent to solipsism which doesn't accept the existence of other independent minds apart from one's own?

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    2. I'll modify Zakaj's past quote a bit:

      "We stand alone, with no support, as we float as our own artistic creations of the world, in the vast infinite recursion that is what creates, without creator or created, - a personal creativity as an infinite process."

      However, how does that point to solipsism? Solipsism doesn't even acknowledge that one's friends or pets have a mind.

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    3. Oh nevermind... you mean either epistemological or methodological solipsism.

      Metaphysical solipsism is a schizophrenic view though

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    4. "Metaphysical solipsism is a schizophrenic view though"

      an ultra sane schizophrenia !

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  7. i think i had dia kensho as a child, i've been treated like S-H-I-T most of my life.

    i like that you have your cousin on your website. i had a cousin who treated me better than my parents when i went to portugal.



    i'm reading kusan sunim's book. it says he was cremated and their were 53 relics found in his ashes. can that really happen?

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