Sadie about The Love of Sacrifice Thu, 20.11.2008 04:46 Beautifully described pain. Wr
apped in pretty paper and bows
with the disillusion of madne
ss hiding within it. Pe [...]Comments ()
Dirk about infected mushrooms ~ lsd Sat, 15.11.2008 15:44 Flashback evocation!
The
interesting thing to note is
that all the hyper-experience
of entheogens and such, [...]Comments ()
knomevol about Placebo - Pure Morning Thu, 13.11.2008 14:56 "effects a positive change wit
hout the carcinogenic side eff
ect."
"we were all unhealth
y, all of us.
i didn' [...]Comments ()
knomevol about These ARE unprecedented times. Thu, 13.11.2008 14:17 i've heard enough times lately
that when the fit are doing t
heir surviving it's because th
ey're adaptable.
read [...]Comments ()
Dirk about How the Co-dependency Movement Is Ruining Marriages Fri, 07.11.2008 20:52 Something very strange is goin
g on, it seems. Perhaps the m
essage of the media and moveme
nts is having an impact [...]Comments ()
e4porti about How the Co-dependency Movement Is Ruining Marriages Wed, 05.11.2008 03:37 "The NEW thing" -- Straight wo
men dating "GAY" men.
http://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8vNkD
HViFs
How much of the p [...]Comments ()
e4porti about The Pixies : Where Is My Mind (1988) Wed, 05.11.2008 03:35 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=MbZM6ZSlvvY
Ive been crushin
g on this song bad.
"How it E
nds" by DeVotchKa
Lyric [...]Comments ()
Dirk about DogZen Mon, 03.11.2008 18:46 Just in case this is misunders
tood by those unfamiliar with
Zen Buddhism, et al, the idea
is that these phrases ar [...]Comments ()
Dirk about Elections USA: Do They Matter? Fri, 24.10.2008 23:26 Thanks LH! I think your comme
nt adds an important addendum
to what was already a very ill
uminating, (for the mass [...]Comments ()
Dirk about THE 20 PREMISES OF DERRICK JENSEN'S "ENDGAME" Fri, 24.10.2008 23:22 This is well-though-out and cl
early articulated.
I can't
find much contention with the
way that Jensen has mana [...]Comments ()
Longhair about Elections USA: Do They Matter? Fri, 24.10.2008 22:06 pretty good, though I don't th
ink it went far enough , like
say telling us who (the bankin
g system) or what is rea [...]Comments ()
Longhair about Chemtrail Alert System Fri, 17.10.2008 22:10 the link in the title of this
post works for meComments ()
Sticky Postings
If you give something now and then, consider us this time around.
We don't run advertisements and are not a for-profit service. Please donate any amount you can to Sensibly Eclectic.
If you enjoy our site, the information provided, and/or our original articles, we would appreciate your help in keeping the SE, and its authors, moving forward. If you are feeling generous or can drop something in the change jar, it would really be so helpful and much appreciated.
Just click the button below and share and care and feel good about it, too! It's 100% secure. If you have had a boon or great fortune, do pass some on and pay the good luck forward, (like we do). We have been "loving you long time" here.
Thanks in advance and we sincerely wish lots of good, instant Karma to you and yours in return, no matter how little or much you can donate. The more, the better!
Could be. Could be not. Maybe so. We'll see? Third eye blind? APpLiCaTiOn? Here is the application now. The heart of the matter? If it was given to you, could you take it? Why? Why why? Why not why? Why why not? Is this reality working well enough for you since your indoctrination to the point that you would preserve it forever as it appears? Fear? Where? Here? Well, now.
A little does of Nirvana in your cup of samsara with a couple cubes of Buddha sugar and a slosh of cream of illusion. Great for waking up at the dawn of reality.
Since many months before the November election, Truth to Power has been researching and informing readers regarding the fundamental underpinnings of Barack Obama's agenda and his likely appointments in the areas of economic, foreign policy, and energy issues. Not only have I written several pieces on the topic, so have a variety of other researchers. In reviewing our reporting, what has remained consistent and therefore validates it, is Obama's adherence to neoliberal, globalist policies couched in the rhetoric of "change" but offering no substantial departure from the ultimate strategies of imperialism, corporate capitalist supremacy, and almost total ignorance (or ignore-ance) of the energy and environmental suicide perpetuated by endless growth.
Without our total debt, both public and private, there would be almost no money at all in today's system. Get that. This informative and entertaining video will give you the history of money, banks, and how debt is the real substance behind today's economy.
This is a great time to see a somewhat comprehensive primer on money and what it actually is today. What is better or more valuable than crucial information in crucial times? This kind of knowledge is useful in many ways for the present and for the future. It opens your eyes and lets you see that the increasing chains of endless debt that grow heavier all the time are actually, in substance, made from absolutely nothing but ideas. There is not even any real value behind the ideas and paper that we mistake, out of ignorance, for something real.
This is a good one to share and promote because the time is right. Fifty minutes spent watching this will change the way you and those you know see the system at large. It will also help you see alternatives and solutions that were occluded by the deception that has replaced value with enslaving debt and created a parasitic relationship that will have to fail eventually. How it fails and how it affects people and the World is what is at stake.
Use this as a basis to help you put the pieces together as a small step towards clarity, justice, and equanimity for all. Actually, what does not seem to make sense only seems so when you don't have all the information you need.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Poverty in the United States is spreading from rural and inner-city areas to the suburbs, according to a study, a situation that can worsen as the economy confronts what may be a protracted recession.
The study by the Federal Reserve's Community Affairs department and the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program found that poverty levels in the world's richest nation were on the rise.
"It shows that concentrated poverty is still very much with us, and that it can be found among a much more diverse set of communities and families than previous research has emphasized," said Bruce Katz, a director Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program.
"Poverty is spreading and may be re-clustering in suburbs, where a majority of America's metropolitan poor now live."
Fueled by rising unemployment and food prices, the number of Americans on food stamps is poised to exceed 30 million for the first time this month, surpassing the historic high set in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina.
Whatever you thought about any of these artists, hip-hop had a sense of honesty and integrity about it. For the most part, it appears that the genre sprang out of the grassroots. A lot of rap artists had actually lived the kind of life they rapped about. To some extent or other, many of them had already gained first-hand experience of the guns, drugs, racism, gang warfare, and the general despair of living life in the ghetto. For example, many of these issues were covered in a song called Colors, by Ice-T. In this song, Ice-T plays a character who lives this kind of life. Ice-T admits that he didn't personally live that kind of life but the character is based on the kind of person who does. Then a couple of years later, a rap outfit called NWA started rapping about the same issues in their debut album, Straight Outta Compton. And although the music was very good, they gave the misleading impression that they were actually living lives as gangsters in the ghetto. But in reality these guys were living millionaire lifestyles in the lap of luxury. I personally found this to be somewhat hypocritical and it was at this point that I realised that hip-hop had been taken over by the marketing gurus, who weren't just selling a lie, they were selling it to kids under the pretence that artists like "Vanilla Ice" had actually tasted life in the ghetto - yeah right!
Now hip-hop has reached the stage where it is being used to predictively program the minds of today's youth. In addition, many of today's top hip-hop artists are clearly involved to some degree in secret fraternal orders. They even have the audacity to flash masonic symbols all over the place. To me, this is an insult to the people who buy their music, and it shows that freemasonry has infiltrated just about every part of society, right down to the grassroots levels. I mean, if you can't even buy an album from your favorite rap artist without being predictively programmed and bombarded with masonic symbols and terms, then what is the world coming to?
Of course, you have to factor-in your amenities like a wood stove, water supply, etc. Yet, you can add anything you want like electricity and plumbing.
While I can’t claim to be the world’s foremost expert on relationships, I do know that my wife and I have a very strong marriage, and have never been more in love.
I’ve failed at marriage before, but that’s helped me become better at it. I’ve learned the deadly sins of relationships, and how to recognize them and avoid them.
A reader, newly married, asked me to share my tips on how to make a marriage work. I wish I had a magic formula, but here’s a simple list of tips:
* spend time alone together;
* appreciate each other;
* be intimate often;
* talk and share and give.
But just as important as what you should do is what you shouldn’t do — and I’m sure many of you have stepped into these pitfalls yourselves. I know I have. I’ve learned from my mistakes, and have learned to recognize when I’m making a fatal error, and how to correct it.
There once lived a great warrior. Though quite old, he still was able to defeat
any challenger. His reputation extended far and wide throughout the land
and many students gathered to study under him.
One day an infamous young warrior arrived at the village. He was
determined to be the first man to defeat the great master. Along with his
strength, he had an uncanny ability to spot and exploit any weakness in an
opponent. He would wait for his opponent to make the first move, thus
revealing a weakness, and then would strike with merciless force and
lightning speed. No one had ever lasted with him in a match beyond the first
move.
Much against the advice of his concerned students, the old master gladly
accepted the young warrior's challenge. As the two squared off for battle, the
young warrior began to hurl insults at the old master. He threw dirt and spit
in his face. For hours he verbally assaulted him with every curse and insult
known to mankind. But the old warrior merely stood there motionless and
calm. Finally, the young warrior exhausted himself. Knowing he was
defeated, he left feeling shamed.
Somewhat disappointed that he did not fight the insolent youth, the students
gathered around the old master and questioned him. "How could you endure
such an indignity? How did you drive him away?"
"If someone comes to give you a gift and you do not receive it," the master
replied, "to whom does the gift belong?"
Well, here we are and welcome to the Temple of Irreconcilable Differences. I'll be your Zen Monkey tonight.
Welcome, honorable labels and gentle bodies. We are pleased to have you join us for this auspicious plunge into exhilarating extinction and groundless formations. We will witness the end of all suffering together in the Diner of Delusions and then feast on jellied aggregates, smothered in spacey sauce at the Buddha Buffet.
First, find an environment. That is absolutely essential because you cannot perform this extremely special, powerful, enlightening, and ultra-superior meditation without one. You might try one that makes you feel all cool and mystical and like someone very special who is fully deserving of, and ready for, such a valuable boon.
Choose your favorite position, either alone or with someone else. This can be a yoga posture, standing on your head, standing on someone else's head, (if they are OK with that), standing with a cup of coffee in one hand and a good smoke in the other, leaning drunkenly against anything supportive, laying down on the job, or 69.
Now, don't try to relax. Let go of relaxing, tense up, and breath shallow while distracting your mind with the all the countless things that you usually follow around in your head like a crippled monkey on mushrooms. Good.
Begin to fidget and squirm as you wonder about things you should be doing right now. Worry intently about what you need to do tomorrow or in days to come and add some vague fears that inspire you to dwell on very bad things that might happen to you at any time. Great! You are getting it. Slip gently into ruminating about your past and be sure to obsess about regrets and things you could have, should have, would have done instead and compare anything good you remember with just how crappy things are now.
Great blowing job there. Now you are ready to proceed farther, hopping insect person.
OK. Now stop doing all that suddenly!
Inhale bowls-full of deep belly breaths as relaxation just happens, slowly making you feel like Gumby on muscle relaxants or The Blob in a leak-proof hammock. Let each in-breath suck the filling out of you and everything around you like sucking the creamy center out of a gigantic Twinkie. First, there is a Twinkie. Then, there is no Twinkie. Then, there is. Let each out-breath leak out like a major payment on your Cosmic Credit Card bringing you closer to closing your account for good.
With two eyes closed, (the third is optional) contemplate the navel of your existence, pulling out the fleshy cork and peering in, to see that there is nothing at all on the other side that is not. In this way, as television has taught you so well, all the forms you see are supported by nothing. Now, quickly go to Void and lose your behind. There!
Can you realize that there is nothing of substance behind the appearances and phenomena around you, just like American currency and political parties? Does the emptiness begin to permeate what was sold, like tuxedos to penguins, as both separate and concrete? Can you begin to not attain what you already have as if it were a bucket of paint posing as a comfortable couch or impatient lover? Could you give four stars to the B-movie of your life when you see that only the characteristics of what you think things are paint the blacks and whites and shades of gray on your cola splattered screen of awareness? Or is yours in color? Well, let the spectrum be a speculum for the dilation of your existence ideation.
Be that Not Being that you are in a moment! Ahhhhh! So, suffering is not worth investing in with this kind of market crash, perhaps?
That fully concludes our endless, non-mediation on Emptiness. Now excuse me while I vacuum-up the transparent dandruff of illusions that you have shed all over the floorless carpet of Instant Karma.
May you never be able, (or need) to come back now, ya' hear?
Egolessness (non-self) implies the void characteristics of all existence. Egolessness (non-self) signifies the non-existence of permanent identity for self and existence (Dharma). Sunyata stresses the voidness characteristic of self and existence (Dharma). Sunyata and egolessness possess similar attributes. As we have discussed before, we can observe the profound significance of sunyata from the perspective of inter-dependent relationships. Considering dharma-nature and the condition of nirvana, all existences are immaterial and of a void-nature. Then we see each existence as independent of each other. But then we cannot find any material that does exist independent of everything else. So egolessness also implies void-nature!
Comment:
Consider that ego is found in egolessness as is the other way around. They also appear to arise and fall together and so, there is no ego or egolessness whatsoever, but simply characteristics that we apply in ignorance. Relationships between ideas and things are not real in this sense though they tend to hold relative significance in our momentary and illusory grasp of a myriad of particulars.
In that case, real, (this is so) and unreal, (this is not so) eternalism, (I live forever) and nihilism, (I cease to be) also yield to the Emptiness of the Void which is not nothingness. We can also relate the Void as completely open and vastly spacious, without error. Finally, we can relate the Void as full of form(s). However, it is obvious that the terminology and distinctions once again arise in awareness as dualistic representations or as clouds in the clear, blue sky. Characteristics that we distinguish, arise in our minds. Form being emptiness and emptiness being form stand out more as contradictions at first, then as a paradox, next as polar opposites united as the Tao or Dharma, but all resolves in the unity of Realization. Then we say form is emptiness, emptiness is form, form is not form, emptiness is not emptiness, etc.
The semantics are obviously a part of the discrimination that, along with the other aggregates, give rise to the synergy of the notion of a separate self. If the result of synergy is where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, then we can clearly see that this kind of math equates with the result of the experience of the illusion of a real, eternal, individual self from the aggregates of matter/form, sensation/feeling, perception/senses, thinking/discrimination and consciousness.
Nirvana (our true nature) is samsara (phenomenal world of ordinary life) in that respect. With our propensity and requirements to distinguish real from unreal, truth from falsity, comes the ability not to only separate them for practical purposes in ordinary life, but to see them both clearly in relationship and begin to remove the barriers to the inherit realization of our true nature enough to see that there are no barriers to our true nature and that there is no true nature to speak of. In that sense, we can see that our circumstances are far more auspicious than they are mundane if we understand that suffering and ignorance have their resolution in the extinction of Enlightenment once realized. How? Ah, well, that is the eternal question for those who discover this kind of pathless path.
Imagine that samsara relies on its phenomenal web of illusions by way of distraction or forgetting. The temporal chain of events, as they stand, might rely on the dream being taken as actual and factual. From there, though this is only an abstract forging of mere thought-stuff again, you might be able to discern how Nirvana becomes occluded in our exclusion of its absolute and present nature. So, it may be said that even to want to attain Nirvana is attachment, we might see that the non-attainment of its attainment can be just as swift and sudden as it can be long and arduous as a discipline.
Because this is a good time to consider freedom from suffering. You may see the deep and subtle aspects of the Diamond Sutra if you read it slowly with gentle focus.
Section XVII. No One Attains Transcendental Wisdom
At that time Subhuti addressed Buddha, saying: World-honored One, if good men and good women seek the Consummation of Incomparable Enlightenment, by what criteria should they abide and how should they control their thoughts?
Buddha replied to Subhuti: Good men and good women seeking the Consummation of Incomparable Enlightenment must create this resolved attitude of mind: I must liberate all living beings, yet when all have been liberated, verily not any one is liberated. Wherefore? If a Bodhisattva cherishes the idea of an ego-entity, a personality, a being, or a separated individuality, he is consequently not a Bodhisattva, Subhuti. This is because in reality there is no formula which gives rise to the Consummation of Incomparable Enlightenment.
Subhuti, what do you think? When the Tathagata was with Dipankara Buddha was there any formula for the attainment of the Consummation of Incomparable Enlightenment?
No, World-honored One, as I understand Buddha's meaning, there was no formula by which the Tathagata attained the Consummation of Incomparable Enlightenment.