One who experiences the unity of life sees one's own self in all beings, and all beings in one's own self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye.
Male
52 years old
Enumclaw, WASHINGTON
United States
Philosophy, Music, Family, Etc. Not necessarily in that order...
Music
I listen to almost anything. I'm not overly fond of Rap or pop Country and I have to excercise a little patience with most Opera. But I can listen to almost anything.
Movies
what the bleep do we know?, blade runner, being there, the man who would be king, the king of hearts, 13th warrior, LotR, razor's edge, waking life, the life aquatic, bleh... too many to name!....
Television
History channel, Foodnetwork, sometimes the local college tv station. The TV is usually only on for background noise.
Books
For entertainment I read Sci Fi and Fantasy. I've read everything ever written by Robert Heinlein (that I know of, lol). I also think highly of Julian May, specifically the Saga of Pliocene Exile. You'll want to keep a dictionary handy when you read these (which I found refreshing), although she dumbed down the vocabulary some in the subsequent Intervention and Galactic Milieu books (no doubt at the behest of her publisher.) I have yet to sample any of her more recent work, but I expect it will be just as good.
Recent Reads:
Tuesdays with Morrie
by Mitch Albom
Tao Te Ching
Translated by D.C. Lau
The Zen Teaching of Huang Po
-on the transmission of mind
Translated by John Blofeld
Being Nobody, Going Nowhere
by Ayya Khema
What the Buddha Taught
by Walpola Rahula
The Analects of Confucius
Translated by Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr.
Buddhism as Philosophy
by Mark Siderits
The Wisdom of No Escape
by Pema Chodron
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
by Shunryu Suzuki
The Myth of Freedom
by Chogyam Trungpa
I am currently reading:
No Time To Lose
by Pema Chodron
Tibetan Book of the Dead
commentary by Chogyam Trungpa
translation by Francesca Fremantle
-"There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it."
-- William James
"He that would seriously set upon the search of truth ought in the first place to prepare his mind with a love of it....How a man may know whether he be [a lover of truth] in earnest, is worth inquiry; and I think there is one unerring mark of it, viz. the not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant. Whoever goes beyond this measure of assent, it is plain receives not the truth in the love of it; loves not truth for truth's sake, but for some other bye-end."
-- John Locke, from An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
“… how potent is the wise man, and how much he surpasses the ignorant man, who is driven only by his lusts. For the ignorant man is not only distracted in various ways by external causes without ever gaining, the true acquiescence of his spirit, but moreover lives, as it were unwitting of himself, and of God, and of things, and as soon as he ceases to suffer, ceases also to be.”
-- Benedict de (Baruch) Spinoza
-"There is no saint without a past and no sinner without a future."
-“Let your life be that of the rose; in silence, it speaks the language of fragrance.”
-- Babaji
-"My God! I can see only that which I am."
-"The train of thought follows the tracks laid down by ones inner conversations."
-- Betty Cloak
"For people in the world today who are not yet spiritually awake, their actions and experiences are but superficial incidents occurring on the stage of self-conscious or egocentric life. They commonly experience their mind-conditioned, habit-bound lives as a partially conscious, dreamlike sequence of events with little or no knowledge of their causes or of how to implement actions to change or improve them."
-- Roy Eugene Davis
“Our mental life is governed mainly by a cauldron of emotions, motives and desires which we are barely conscious of, and what we call our conscious life is usually an elaborate post hoc rationalization of things we really do for other reasons.”
-- Dr. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."
-- Teilhard de Chardin
“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”
-- Calvin Coolidge
"He who learns must suffer, and, even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God."
-- Aeschylus
“Conventional opinions fit so comfortably into the dominant paradigm as to be seen not as opinions but as statements of fact, as 'the nature of things.' The very efficacy of opinion manipulation rests on the fact that we do not know we are being manipulated. The most insidious forms of oppression are those that so insinuate themselves into our communication universe and the recesses of our minds that we do not even realize they are acting upon us. The most powerful ideologies are not those that prevail against all challengers but those that are never challenged because in their ubiquity they appear as nothing more than the unadorned truth.”
-- Michael Parenti
"Ultimately, what we call this life is just an illusion of continuity -- a succession of moments; a stream of thoughts, emotions, and memories, which we find in our possession. And, therefore, we too spring into existence, as the possessors of that contnuity. However, upon examination we discover that that continuity is dreamlike, illusory. It is not a continuous or substantial reality. It consists of single moments, which arise, dissolve, and arise again, like waves on an ocean. Therefore, this "I" arises and dissolves in each moment as well. It does not continue from one moment to the next. The "I" of one moment dissolves and is gone. The "I" of the next moment arises afresh. These two "I"s cannot be said to be the same or different, yet they are identified by conceptual mind as a single, continuous self."
-- The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche
"All dharmas are projections of mind.
As for mind, there is no mind; mind's nature is empty.
Empty and unceasing, mind appears as anything.
Investigating it well, may I settle the basic points.
Projections, which never existed in themselves, have been confused as objects.
Awareness itself, due to ignorance, has been confused as a self.
Through the power of dualistic fixation I wander in the realm of existence.
May ignorance and confusion be completely resolved.
It doesn't exist: even buddhas do not see it.
It doesn't not exist: it is the basis of samsara and nirvana.
No contradiction: two-in-one, the middle way.
May I realize the Nature of Mind."
-- 3d Karmapa, Rangjung Dorje - from Aspiration for Mahamudra
Kinda funny, the Bisson paper, "They're Made Out of Meat", is the introductory paper to the philosophy of mind class I am going to be taking next quarter.
He also has a link to this somewhat humorous movie version
Good morning! I just wanted to tell you that I love you. We don't say it often enough, and as you sleep and I sneak out of the house, I wonder if you know just how special you are to me.
