YinYana

Have a Cookie

 In a secular and post theistic society, organisation of
transcendental  experience moves into the field of science. So for
example the knowledge of the future as displayed by prophets is open
to analysis. Is it wanting, incomplete or wrong?
 We may find the practices of ritual, meditation, physical systems
such as yoga or qi-ong have benefits. Does this mean we have to become fried masons, chant to our local lama or stand on our head? Sanity and
rationality may provide some truthful insight. Science is sorting it’s
wheat from chaff. Are the mystics baking?
 A spiritual path that enhances our existing qualities and enables
and empowers our well being often requires independent efforts.
Otherwise we may be confined to partial, bogus or incompetent systems.
Sadly that may be the best that is available. Can we provide better?
 It may be that inspirational understanding requires experiences
closer to art than a methodical approach. Our balance may reside
between the extremes of science and the genuine gnostic. Such an
approach can yield a complementary rather than conflicting wisdom.
Certainty, order and method may be programmed into us. Is partial
knowledge representative of the excesses of all confined thinking?
 Humour is not a science. It may be funny to follow or break rules. It
is always appropriate to offer jokes at Nasrudin’s funeral. Nasrudin
will never die. Sing and dance, for you are a funny and temporary
creature. Altruistic qualities may transcend biological evolution.
Dance and music may be expressions that will be difficult for AI to
appreciate rather than analyse.
 There is much in our humanity we can reappraise. A simulation of
humanity may have to include capacities that we consider redundant. A
trans-human cyborg may need to suffer, die or feel emotions before we
abandon the flesh.
 We may sympathise with the deluded theist or wish for a wider
interior life for the convinced atheist. Each may find value in
increasing their store of wisdom by being true to their ideals. It is
not a question of sides but an invitation to a larger sphere of
influences. Shall we leave it to chance?

 A visitor said, “Nasrudin some say you are wise and some call you
fool, which are you?”
 ”Such questions are easily settled by the toss of a coin but I seem
to have spent all my money. Perhaps you can provide the means for an
answer?”

So who made God?

   There I was on Barry Kaulers, The Creator of Puppy Linux blog devoted to the hard rigorous thinking of Linux programming.
   In the comments someone asks

Oh dear
Lets get straight to the point. So who made God?

   Creating a universe and many dimensions is within the capacity of future human evolution. It may seem presently impossible. However a short while ago, we were monkeys eating food without even a microwave. We have time. Creating a first atom or principle to initiate a big bang can come about spontaneously or from intent from those without time related constraints. In other words those enabled to travel through the time continuum.
   The gods able to marry their own grandparent, may befuddle the limited thinking of those who continue to believe the one god or omnipotent model of expression but not everyone requires gods to be fabrications of only our imagination.
   Those joining from the transcendent lobby, rarely engage from their position of knowledge based experience or Gnosis. They leave that to unenlightening gurus, profitless prophets and others who enjoy a bit of chatter amongst the trees. A seer of the ‘essence of things’ is characteristically mute and meditative, as the Sufi Chisti dared to say.
   So who made our mind up? I for one am not even sure of the minds existence.
   “We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make our world” as the Buddha said to his fellow enlightened colleagues.
   I for one, will be joining any god creation program. Bring on enlightened AI, we may finally have an intelligent designer that anyone can understand.  

another great point is made:

   We all know in England that loads of our wisest men, like Newton, Francis Bacon, etc, while being scientific, were all speculative, and had crazy ideas as well… Just because someone plays good piano, doesn’t mean they can sing!

   Newton was not so wise. Smart with a very high IQ but limited EQ.
   Francis Bacon much wiser. Had the sense to keep the formula for gunpowder from a Chinese source - secret. Two hundred years of freedom from abuse by the military, until it was rediscovered.
   It seems that meme production in the scientific and academic church is often the result of narrow commercial and military interests. Whole areas of research are therefore ignored as untenable for funding. As the need for social and psychological profiling is now statistically viable, it moves from soft science to enter the ability to predict the emergence of behaviour from programmed data pattern searching.
   To take another great technological genius: Tesla. As mad as his favourite pigeon but a great genius. So much of his research was deliberately confiscated and shelved. That is blatant. That is knowledge filtration of the most overt kind.
   Somehow we have to have a balance, a place for singing and playing and tuning in.

  Quite often we work within a tradition. This may be far easier if we have a cultural heritage perhaps being born as a Hindu or a Jew. As a Hindu we have the symbology of the god states and as a Jew we have the meaning of the kabbalah. Humour is universal to us all …

The Empty Room…

Nasrudin would constantly enter a small locked room in his house and come out looking very troubled. Eventually someone asked him “Mullah what is in the small locked room?”

“I keep it empty,” explained Nasrudin, “but every time I enter, something seems to be in the room. I suspect someone is stealing the emptiness … “

“Show me!” demanded the curious enquirer.

Reluctantly Nasrudin opened the room.

“But Mullah, there is nothing in this room but me and you.”

“It is getting worse!” exclaimed the Mullah, “Yesterday there was only me in here …”

More Nasrudin

Attune and Resonate

  Are you aware of the consciousness of child and adult?
  Sure!
  You should have been through both, with an interlude for the hormone based semi-consciousness of adolescence. What is happening in the search for mind bigger than Marvin the paranoid android? Is a global meme based consensus of awareness emerging in the age of a connected humanity? It has the feel of a hive in cyber-world.
  Is outsider mentality now part of entertainment for the mainstream cyber-space consumer? Will the requirement for diversity introduce or dull us to potential differences? Is an experiential facet, lacking current means of direct expression emerging independently of altered entheogen induced states? I want a mind I can upgrade and offer memory models and generally have all that Neo and the Matrix offer …
  Atheism and mechanistic science has found no internal or external evidence of consciousness independent of biological processing.
  Surprised? Me not!
  Will science expand and perhaps offer new opportunities to those lacking an experience that transcends existing limitations? Or are the intellectual weaklings going to continue a debate with religious bigots, the terminally indoctrinated and others whose spiritual fragility has no place in a mature spirituality.
  Parody religions, such as the Church of the Sub genius, the Flying spaghetti monster or my own Cecil the Ultimate Deity (an Open Source deity), rightly ridicule the obsessively infantile, superstitious legacy.
  There now exists new personal looping, ritual reinforcement of preferred traits used in modern magical methods such as NLP or cognitive psychology, psycho drama etc. Do such methods reinforce the strengths and weakness of a partial development? Do we await the new shaman? The possibility of effecting mind through electro magnetic feedback and other games of science? Oh what fun.
  The oldest intelligence may be nothing more than a field of awareness. The search for the God particle, beyond the Higgs Field, may reveal that gods exist and this consciousness is amoral or partial, dependent on how it arises and expresses itself.
  What sort of gods are out there? Well there is us in the future or our trans-human descendants. Humanity will be joining any global, universal and multi-dimensional consciousness it comes into contact with. Well maybe not the Borg. Will humanity have a choice?
  Human measurement is entangled with our linear development. The scatter brain or attention deficit consciousness evolving in the Internet, is a potential for awareness through integration with a more global networked thinking. Favouring the individual in its relationship to the global social network. I am ready to look for, create or join existing gods. How about you? Gonna stick with Nothing?
Dear Friends of all Sentients

In the magical quantum universe
the Universe is alive or at least tangled
with a living consciousness.
We move towards creating AI and
finding ways to create virtual heaven and hells. Who will be allowed into the past
to copy the consciousness signal and entangle it into a reality they judge appropriate?
As the religious nerds find ways to empower
a spiritual singularity, how far beyond infinity
will it encompass and merge?
At long last humanity will be able to invent
a deity transcending its limits.
Who will be left to crop circles or
remain unplugged to the enlightenment?

The Buddha Whirled

  Our inner processes manifest in our being. Our expression becomes indicative of our attachments  and overriding characteristics. In many ways having a critical and objective understanding of our virtues and negative tendencies offers a path to progress.
  Integrity is the key. When we start it is important to engage in a process of focusing on the positive and finding a way of reinforcing these karmic possibilities. It is why we have the example of the three jewels. All of us have a tendency to focus on trivial garnishing, when the innate path is both simple and liberating.
  Finding the essence of what the path means is independent of complexity. As we progress and the path encompasses and influences others, we may have to engage in subtle and skillful strategies to encourage a persons search for integrity. So when a process of unraveling seems to have qualities, it may be to reveal and engage a response. As always the response is what we can learn from, just as we can treat the whole world as a dharma to engage and learn from.
  We are composed of parts that are friendly towards our needs and requirements and other parts that seem to be conflicted. Initially in a persons progress it is important to focus on ones interior sense of well being.
  In the process of sitting one learns to become accustomed to a variety of arisings. We may feel discomfort (try sitting on a chair or attentively relaxing into the discomfort). Things that are uppermost arrive, just be aware of their nature as friends and metta - perhaps disguised …
  Eventually we become more friendly or centered, around a variety of these inner beings. The inner being will be calmer as karma is expunged.

Better Buddhism

  Practicing goodwill to the meditating body is part of the feeding of Buddhas and angels. Yinyana is thus passively active. This manifests in relaxing the points of contention, whether felt, experienced or imagined. There is no differentiation between worlds. Our focal body, our mind is extended both inward to explore arisings and outward to explore arisings. All of them are our belongings.
  Overt and cultural vestiges are no substitute for mind enhancement technology, meditation and virtuous behaviour as a basic human necessity. A mind confused by superstition, wishful fantasies and lesser wheel dharma is no basis for mind science. If we are not a science, then we are a wasteful process.
  Mongolian throat chanting is no indication of sanctity any more than a better gargle. It is our capacity to change our chosen field. The ability to contribute to a positive and happier world. Be inspired by our heritage and lineage. Live in the moment and move towards a future of enlightened being.

If you meet God on the road, kill him

  Just as hatha yoga believes in a plastic body, Buddhism believes in a plastic mind. We can change the processing, the nature of the reality we experience. The Sufis say it well, ‘Increase in Love’. This really is the whole of spirituality.
  The macroversic god as reflected in the quantum level being we call human is part of an Abrahamic complex. It means that a well rounded personality is an attribute of God and a complete being. As well as a capacity for great passion and another 98 attributes, we develop a personality. Well that is one way of looking at it.
  For me God is more of a character and usually a caricature not worth serving or otherwise wasting compassion on. Too harsh? Blasphemous? I like to feel it is because I am out of tune with demigods. I would send them to hell to experience a little more compassion. Infinite wisdom seems infinitely incompetent. Like Limbo or hungry ghost realms, I choose to see such things as representations of mind states.  Maybe I need tuning to a frequency higher than Cecil the Ultimate Deity.  
  The Dharmic tradition aims for a middle way. The extremes are brought to a center based on calm and equanimity. It is why you get less raving or marathon running Buddhists. In the words of the Zen Masters, ‘If you meet God on the road, kill him’. OK that is my ranting over till next time … have a great day and be kind to the fish. 

Meet the Meat

 Will Karma free meat be replacing the nut burgers of the dharmically nutty? Perhaps not. Perhaps even the association with eating people is too cannibalistic. Yep I think animals are persons, though I doubt the Tibetan fallacy that the chicken we are having for supper tonight was my mother in a previous incarnation. Too daft?
  If you wish to emulate Jain levels of ahimsa to include not washing or cleaning teeth in order to avoid microbe genocide, good luck to you, silly person. Idealism is not a virtue, it is a smug vice and I advise us all to engage with the world, without being swallowed by it. ‘In the world but not of it’, as the Christian mystics say. Now pass the relish …