Archive for July, 2012
Getting to Sleep
Posted by antitheology in Mysticism on July 11, 2012
Lately I’ve been having to get up at six in the morning, for Zen practice. This is bad because I have insomnia and generally terrible sleep patterns. Here are some things I have found that help. Some of them are tips from my master; thanks, Haju!
1. Do not sleep at odd hours! Not under any circumstances!
2. Don’t do stimulating things in the evening. In my case these include: computer usage; eating sugar; intellectually demanding tasks. I try to reserve these activities for the morning or afternoon.
3. Chamomile tea.
4. Self-hypnosis works. I gather that a lot of people use elaborate techniques with visualizations, recitations, etc. to hypnotize themselves. In my case, for this task, I just invoke the feeling of comfortably dozing off, without the use of that sort of formal machinery.
Four Unreasonable Poems
Posted by antitheology in Poetry, Rationality and Spirituality on July 10, 2012
1.
Hey guys, look at all this truth I brought for you!
Oh, you don’t want any of it?
…Not a word?
2.
I shouldn’t need
to dress up my intuitions in math
to make them acceptable to you.
But I’ll do it,
if it means you’ll finally listen.
3.
First I believed everything I was told.
That’s what you do when you’re a child.
As a teenager I began to know things for myself,
and they told me I was wrong.
I was epistemically torn, and beaten, and battered
and bruised until finally I believed
that whoever has the power
is the one who’s right.
I fell for that ancient ruse,
like a rock off a cliff.
I played the game.
I believed only what I could force others to believe.
Damn could I play.
And I took all of this and began calling it “truth.”
But y’know, truth sort of has a different melody
than the one we’re singin’ in school.
4.
I am sick of conspiring
in my own downfall because it’s easier
than standing up.
Consistency
Posted by antitheology in Uncategorized on July 5, 2012
I can’t help if I contradict myself sometimes. The truth is a very strange place.
The world is your body.
Posted by antitheology in Mysticism on July 5, 2012
Our starvation is a physical manifestation of our inner hunger. Our infections are manifestations of our inner disease. Our wars are manifestations of our divisions within ourselves.
It is for this reason that people in America are depressed. When you remove the physical manifestations of suffering, the suffering does not go away; its spiritual nature simply becomes more obvious. Then we call it depression.
If you want to end world hunger, learn to feel full and happy. If you want to cure cancer, learn to be in harmony with yourself. If you want to fight pollution, learn to think pure and beautiful thoughts.
You can’t remove other people’s pain. But people can’t learn to remove their own pain if they don’t have an example to follow.
That poor man that you refused to help? That suffering animal that you neglected and let die? You are him. You are it. The world is your body; end your suffering and you end all suffering. Save yourself and you save the world.