rainrain

The stories about god are a copy of a copy of a copy. Dumbed down. Rendered in terms of popular metaphor. Light years from the original report by the weird old tripping mystic in the cave.

Imagine 1000 years from now. Quantum physics gets conflated with SpongeBob SquarePants.

If good, evil and god were phenomena that could be observed directly then we'd understand better through that.

And that is arguably the case. I mean, the literature is full of god-sightings. And people have feelings of good and evil too.

That would depend on your experience, surely. And experience varies.

There's a zen story about that

Once upon a time there was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away. That evening, all of his neighbors came around to commiserate. They said, “We are so sorry to hear your horse has run away. This is most unfortunate.” The farmer said, “Maybe.”

The next day the horse came back bringing seven wild horses with it, and in the evening everybody came back and said, “Oh, isn’t that lucky. What a great turn of events. You now have eight horses!” The farmer again said, “Maybe.”

The following day his son tried to break one of the horses, and while riding it, he was thrown and broke his leg. The neighbors then said, “Oh dear, that’s too bad,” and the farmer responded, “Maybe.”

The next day the conscription officers came around to conscript people into the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. Again all the neighbors came around and said, “Isn’t that great!” Again, he said, “Maybe.”

Love the junk. Keep it organized and labelled on shelves. Accumulate it. Yes.

I was perusing antique pool fittings. Ball-and-socket orientable jets and such. A veritable dragon's horde of clever designs.

My friend always wanted to spar like DBZ.

I don't recall the title. Mind... somethingorother. It's been a long time.

But here's a big famous one that talks about it. The Yoga Philosophy of Patanjali ( https://a.co/d/76RM5jE ). It's towards the back. A chapter entitled supernormal powers.

Concentration (aka Samatha, Anapanasati, Samprajnata Dhyana) taken deep will deliver powers. But it also has downsides.

Nonconcentration (Shikantaza, Vipassana, Asamprajnata Dhyana) is better. But you kinda need to get good at concentration first and get a handle on what's involved.

(Used together is very powerful.)

I do Shikantaza these days.

(The Fluffy Cloud school has a nice succinct guide with pictures : http://fleen.org/fluffy_cloud )

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Cops are not a separate species. They are as pig-ignorant, reactive and violent as everybody else. They just enjoy more opportunities to express it.

Immediate results are a better motivator than a happy story, surely.

Well, it is for me anyway. And I suspect that it is for most of us.

What are the immediate effects?