Each Culture is Best Characterized by its Omissions

Christianity endlessly repeats a rather humdrum story of a gutsy carpenter crucified thousands of years ago. The hyperbole and embellishments of this simple tale belie the fact of its utter humility. We omit that Christ was not greatly learned or terribly accomplished, nor even especially saintly. Yet in all the pomp, pronouncements and processions, we achieve that which is most central to culture throughout the West: the masking and overcompensation for great and profound insecurities and inadequacies. The fundamental meaning of Christiandom is overcompensation.

The culture arising out of Buddhism contrasts markedly to that of the West, as the Buddha was a great prince born into immense security and luxury, with no need to overcompensate. So then what we find in Buddhism is a sterility and emptiness born of utter satisfaction. Not wanting for anything, Buddhism becomes a practice without abiding relationships or goals to accomplish, other than being.

One must be drawn to Christianity for its endless hope and striving to achieve a need for love--personal and universal--that can never be fulfilled, just as one must be drawn to Buddhism for its perfect contentment with what is now. Both carry the legacies of men and their stories molded by all means out of their material circumstances. What we call "spiritual" are the sensations that arise, and give rise, to such conditions.

So poingnant

R.I.P. David Rackoff

Such an artist.

>http://rorevans.tumblr.com/page/3

Vegetables!

In Whatever Enlightened Tradition

Whatever your goodness or sophistication
You will enter as a novice
And be expected to be
Properly humble.

It matters not
The ideology
Or system

All recapitulate
A hierarchy.

A truly revolutionary group
Would be one that would take in greenhorns
As leaders.

Maybe

You don't need to do
absolutely anything
about what others
think
about
you.

Robert Garot on Criminal Justice Matters

Cloudbearing

Today

There seems to be a logic

When I want to teach my son
And he wants to play
He may be right--

When the cities explode with violence
They may be right
After decades of systematic exclusion
And marginalization

And when hundreds of thousand of gallons
Of oil
Continue spilling into the Gulf of Mexico
Day after day
And no one seems able to find a solution...


We get the leaders we deserve.

The Mother of Culture

All your wars
To save something which is already changing.

All your borders
To protect something ungraspable.

All your ways
Belong to whomever will take them.

All their ways
Are also yours.

There was silence before.

There will be silence after.

All will be forgotten
And be as it was
Again

To Ruya

Ohio is a piano

http://www.cartogrammar.com/flash/piano/Piano.html

What is this

Constant buzzing
Like the static of the universe
A tv set in the mind

Changing the channel doesn't help.
Best turn it off.

There's a trick

To overcoming all the delusions of mind--
Envy, self-righteousness, greed, depression, sloth, anger, frustration, etc.

It comes with just a little opening up.
Just a little gap.
A little breath.
A little awareness.

Of the sun perhaps.
An old friend.
A brook babbling beneath a bridge.

Ah yes.
Remember?

Self Control

Who is the "self" that needs control
And what is the "self" that is controling?
How could there be two selves?

I believe psychologists have a word for that (schizophrenia)
But they do not apply it to "self control"
Why not?

Money Art

http://www.smokeinmydreams.com/094.html

oh happy day

http://www.gratefulness.org/brotherdavid/index.htm

Sweetness

m.e. of the day