Ra Emperor Penguins and Moi!
Saturday 1:55 p.m.
We're not doing individualism here. This is an anarcho buddhist collectivist bloggy. We don't want to feel separate, alienated, and would like generally to put some distance between us and ..... grief, sorrow, lamentations .... suffering in this life!
I have the same moon as the rest of the human beings. I do not have the same moon as a bat. I share my kind of consciousness with the rest of the human beings. The moon is in my mind, mainly, but when I die, it'll still be there in much the same way for the rest of the human beings.
The main difference between me and the rest of the human beings lies in what we are thinking about, in the kind of thought which is arising. If you take away the thoughts, I share with the other human beings a certain thoughtless awareness. There is a kind of consciousness or awareness there in which the thoughts seem to arise.
It is possible to see this kind of human awareness/consciousness thing as being shared .... I mean, actually see and witness this sharing .... because this kind of thing happened to me once at a party. You'd lost an individual sense of sense and joined in the self everyone else seemed to be sharing. The joes and josephines there were having their different individual thoughts, but they seemed to be joined and sharing some kind of basis.
This was a very temporary and minor example of non-self and emptiness.
I know it might be difficult for your usual flatheid to imagine what it might be like to have a wakeful state with no thoughts in it since flatheids generally live in a state of almost constant thoughts arising, most of which are misapprehended, idiotic and, fortunately, almost immediately forgotten.
Meditation is initially about mental calming that seeks to spread out the time, or enhance the gap, between thoughts.
Once about three years ago, around this time of the year, I was sitting on the island in front of the stupa at the Samye Ling. The weather was overcast and cold, and really quite thoroughly miserable. But it wasn't wet, so it was okay to sit there. With your eyes open, what a horrible prospect! So you just close your eyes and you're in ra bliss. There's light and ra bliss. Though you are sitting in the midst of the not very nice weather, you are feeling extremely pleasant. When thoughts arise, you let them go, cut them off, or transform them. You don't want the thoughts really. Bugger the thoughts!
If you were to be joined by your usual flatheid, discontent would arise almost immediately. What are we doing here, Hotboy? It's horrible here! Why don't we go and look for some sweeties somewhere?
Fortunately, I was joined not by a flatheid, but by an emperor penguin. The emperor penguin said, Hotboy, you're just like me. Come with me to the Antartic and, boy, will I show you a time!
It seems to flatheids like a cold, living hell. There is no sunshine and it never rises about zero for months and months. Sometimes you can see the stars in the sky when you're huddled with all these other emperor penguins, but quite often there's nothing to see except white-outs and darkness. So most of the time your eyes are closed.
Do you have a pineal gland? Yes. you do! So when it gets dark the way it's going to stay dark for months, your pineal gland will maybe put your body into almost hibernating condition. You are maybe not hiberating, but you're not really awake either. You're maybe in a between kind of state.
In the time between being awake and being asleep in the human beings, this is a time very similar to meditation, according to how your brain waves or whatever are manifesting. You also get a glimpse in this passage period of clear light mind, which is landing on the money as far as this juju is concerned.
I hope the emperor penguins are in some kind of meditative state. They don't move much. Organisms that don't move much seem to be fairly satisfied and content. They don't seem to need much, or they'd be moving. Emperor penguins don't seem to have much language and they probably don't have many thoughts at all during this wonderful time in their lives. Maybe the odd image of a fish floats by!
Not wishing to be separate but in some kind of union, maybe you should start with some kind of unity with the flatheids, and then move onto the emperor penguins. Then maybe try to include cats. Do cats meditate? In that dozy bit between being awake and asleep, maybe a cat and I aren't all that different there in terms of our minds and even feelings.
If you don't have thought arising, but just awareness, what can be the difference?
The flat is going to be empty except for moi all today, all tonight and all tomorrow. I'll try to be good, but I may not succeed!
We're not doing individualism here. This is an anarcho buddhist collectivist bloggy. We don't want to feel separate, alienated, and would like generally to put some distance between us and ..... grief, sorrow, lamentations .... suffering in this life!
I have the same moon as the rest of the human beings. I do not have the same moon as a bat. I share my kind of consciousness with the rest of the human beings. The moon is in my mind, mainly, but when I die, it'll still be there in much the same way for the rest of the human beings.
The main difference between me and the rest of the human beings lies in what we are thinking about, in the kind of thought which is arising. If you take away the thoughts, I share with the other human beings a certain thoughtless awareness. There is a kind of consciousness or awareness there in which the thoughts seem to arise.
It is possible to see this kind of human awareness/consciousness thing as being shared .... I mean, actually see and witness this sharing .... because this kind of thing happened to me once at a party. You'd lost an individual sense of sense and joined in the self everyone else seemed to be sharing. The joes and josephines there were having their different individual thoughts, but they seemed to be joined and sharing some kind of basis.
This was a very temporary and minor example of non-self and emptiness.
I know it might be difficult for your usual flatheid to imagine what it might be like to have a wakeful state with no thoughts in it since flatheids generally live in a state of almost constant thoughts arising, most of which are misapprehended, idiotic and, fortunately, almost immediately forgotten.
Meditation is initially about mental calming that seeks to spread out the time, or enhance the gap, between thoughts.
Once about three years ago, around this time of the year, I was sitting on the island in front of the stupa at the Samye Ling. The weather was overcast and cold, and really quite thoroughly miserable. But it wasn't wet, so it was okay to sit there. With your eyes open, what a horrible prospect! So you just close your eyes and you're in ra bliss. There's light and ra bliss. Though you are sitting in the midst of the not very nice weather, you are feeling extremely pleasant. When thoughts arise, you let them go, cut them off, or transform them. You don't want the thoughts really. Bugger the thoughts!
If you were to be joined by your usual flatheid, discontent would arise almost immediately. What are we doing here, Hotboy? It's horrible here! Why don't we go and look for some sweeties somewhere?
Fortunately, I was joined not by a flatheid, but by an emperor penguin. The emperor penguin said, Hotboy, you're just like me. Come with me to the Antartic and, boy, will I show you a time!
It seems to flatheids like a cold, living hell. There is no sunshine and it never rises about zero for months and months. Sometimes you can see the stars in the sky when you're huddled with all these other emperor penguins, but quite often there's nothing to see except white-outs and darkness. So most of the time your eyes are closed.
Do you have a pineal gland? Yes. you do! So when it gets dark the way it's going to stay dark for months, your pineal gland will maybe put your body into almost hibernating condition. You are maybe not hiberating, but you're not really awake either. You're maybe in a between kind of state.
In the time between being awake and being asleep in the human beings, this is a time very similar to meditation, according to how your brain waves or whatever are manifesting. You also get a glimpse in this passage period of clear light mind, which is landing on the money as far as this juju is concerned.
I hope the emperor penguins are in some kind of meditative state. They don't move much. Organisms that don't move much seem to be fairly satisfied and content. They don't seem to need much, or they'd be moving. Emperor penguins don't seem to have much language and they probably don't have many thoughts at all during this wonderful time in their lives. Maybe the odd image of a fish floats by!
Not wishing to be separate but in some kind of union, maybe you should start with some kind of unity with the flatheids, and then move onto the emperor penguins. Then maybe try to include cats. Do cats meditate? In that dozy bit between being awake and asleep, maybe a cat and I aren't all that different there in terms of our minds and even feelings.
If you don't have thought arising, but just awareness, what can be the difference?
The flat is going to be empty except for moi all today, all tonight and all tomorrow. I'll try to be good, but I may not succeed!
posted by Hotboy at 1:49 PM
21 Comments:
I think this post just went over my head at supersonic speed.
Toyo! Maybe this is the bloggy version of the Schleswig Holstein question. Only three folk know what this blog is about now. One's mad; one's dead; and the other one's me, but I've forgotten. Hope this helps. Hotboy
Are you still using your statcounter account? Either statcounter or something else in your template is doing something not completely kosher on my PC, and presumably on others' too.
If you're not using it, you could instruct the hut manager to remove the code from your template. That's what I did at my place, and look where I am now! No comments at all and no need for statcounter.
Find out what drugs were in the punch and there's your answer.
David says the emperor penguins do actually move by shuffling between the inside and the outside to share the pain around. Any movement further than that, and they're dead of -50° cold.
PS a rabbit caught in the headlights doesn't move either, it must be a short-lived bliss. Do you ever do ra bliss on your bike at night?
Toyo - more than one of them may be mad.
Adolf! Heil! How do you know all this stuff about computers? Fancy having your head filled with crap like that. You should get yourself a proper job. I'm for forgetting everything as fast as possible. That's bound to help. Hotboy
Adolf! Zeig? Template? What's going on here? Hotboy
I say!
All this talk about moons and bats reminds me that as the moon went up at the Sydney Cricket Ground last night, the Australians batsmen failed to score many runs, and England won the tournament. Wonderful!
I understand that the official pitch inspection report for the forthcoming World Cup, into which my own efforts in Antigua must surely have fed, has been published. All wickets are fit for play.
MM III
I know, isn't it amazing that we have the same moon! I tell people that all the time.
I think we have a lot in common with emperor penguins, and probably more so with bats since they're also mammals and not reptiles. Some of your own thoughts here are in agreement, but not others. Tell me, when the penguins are roiling to spread the heat around, are they suffering? And when our local zoo penguins have no 24-hr night, are they suffering? I'd love to know.
IOn: Some yogis can fill themselves with heat in the cold. Maybe emperor penguins do that automatically. You couldn't tell if they did, or could, could you? Hotboy
there's evidence that penguins literally spread heat around both in
Damn- I was just getting started when I typed the wrong key.
As I was saying...
There's evidence that penguins spread heat around both in and between themelves. Between themselves, they're either competing or taking turns to keep warm. Inside themselves, the vasculature of their legs also forms a heat-exchange mechanism, so legs, torsos and individuals in the breeding cohort can persist.
Don't believe anything a penguin says! : )
Those emperor penguins have got to be tops for stoicism if they cannot do ra bliss! Why hang about the Antarctic in the first place if you weren't at least indifferent to the bogging weather? Also, what happens to them at sea during these great big storms? Do they get killed by the waves? Do wee birds like sparrows get killed in storms on land? I think we need to know! Hotboy
As you may know, my old man used to euthanise injured sparrows with a hammer. More humane than freezing or drowning. What do you use on the wrens?
There's some penguins cooling off at Alastair's place.
Here's some penguins cooling off.
I say!
I take it that those penguins are your neighbours on the Unheard ofs.
MM III
Hotboy, what do you advise putting in your earhole then?
I say!
One should never put anything smaller than one's elbow in ones earhole.
MM III
Post a Comment
<< Home