"It seems the more detailed and rich the analysis,
the more impossible a true comparison becomes."

-- Thomas Kasulis, Intimacy or Integrity

"You cannot get it
by doing something about it
;
you cannot get it
by doing nothing about it.
...
Wherever you look for it,
it runs away
;
and if you try to deceive the devil
by pretending to yourself that
you are not looking for it,
you certainly
won't deceive
the Tao."

-- Alan Watts, Talking Zen

"Those who claim
to lead the masses
must resolutely refuse
to be led
by
them,
if we want to avoid
mob law
and desire ordered progress
for the country.
I believe
that mere protestation
of one's opinion
is
not only not enough,
but
in matters of vital importance,
leaders
must
act
contrary to the mass of opinion
if it does not commend itself
to their reason."

-- Gandhi, Young Indian 2.23.22

There is no benefit
to avoiding mistakes.
On the contrary,
there is
an art
to making them,
as the only real form
of honest
learning.
The discipline of it
is in
listening closely to one's heart
and reason,
one's
bodymind,
to avoid making
the wrong mistakes.

"What is the value of completeness
if the possibilities generated
during the classification process
have absolutely nothing to do
with the subject area?"

-- Klaus Glashoff, "Problems of
Transcribing Avinabhava
into Predicate Logic"

Indeed,
there is the case in which disbelief is only support for the construction of the object or substance, the ontology, disbelieved --

atheism is the validation of something divine to disbelieve.

The game of God is still played by those who deny God;

the Universal Conspiracy is potentialized (and thus given possibility and room for actuality) --

for this is the very nature of construction,

constructivism,

of nominalist becoming.

It's therefore also the very nature of disbelief, of denial.
In this scheme, of course we only continue to affirm the domain of choices

even by the choice not to choose.

But the problem with games is that we are capable, and often do, forget the rules. I have no contention with God if I have no memory of what God is,

or at least what God's about.
What you have proposed counter to this, my friend,

is the issue,

the superordinate problematic,

of power:

"But what if I kill you
[if you don't play the game]
?"

We are playing life-or-death --

literally, another game with overlaying rules to the above.
Religions,
at least those parts that contend with power --

the dominant and the oppressed,
death and fear of it --

hold the card for challenging this game,

for they are their strongest in spiritual quality

(the origin of purpose for religions)

under the weakest conditions,
at the very brink of their supposed

losing.

(Thus, it is true that you really do sometimes win when you lose.)

Of course the idea is that power belongs to the winner, and that is how the domain of what we call the spiritual

transforms the game of power:

it wins by its loss,

by its surrender to death,

by its crucifixion,

by its Forgetting of death

and thereby of the rules

of the game of power.

As such, the superordination of power over the games of choice and belief and the like, is only so by its affiliation and not by some
intrinsic significance.

But isn't belief the very source
(or at least the vehicle)
to even Religion?

Let's say this:

you must be engaged in
something,
even if in nothing

(which validates there
being something)

We call this belief, passion, whatever you like.
But let's not forget the difference between religion and Religion,

the spirit and the institution.
One only exists by the game of power;

the other can't be contained.

in a dream, there were two of me. one is the recognizable version, the philosopher and dreamer, the one i know best. the other seemed exactly that: other; the symbol of the vision, the master of silence and intensity, the christ.

both are hunted by the tyrannosaur, a constant monster-figure of my childhood. its footsteps thunder throughout every location, the sound of death approaching.

one of us fears it more than the other; in fact, the other is completely without fear. he flies over the head of the monster without a thought. the philosopher cowers and hides. he reasons the best strategies for facing it, but must still resign to a life of reaction and retreat. he must fear, for the structure of his world requires the object of his fear. the sound of footsteps is significant of his reasonable worry.

the other does not cower, he does not flee. the tyrannosaur is hardly any more significant than the trees. the only thing that keeps him from flying, from soaring away into the unknown, is his compassion for the dreamer.

"If we are to reach real peace
in this world
and if we are to carry on a real war
against war,
we shall have to begin with children;
and if they will grow up in their natural innocence,
we won't have to struggle;
we won't have to pass fruitless
idle
resolutions,
but we shall go
from love to love
and peace to peace,
until at last all the corners of the world
are covered with that peace and love
for which
consciously
or unconsciously
the whole world is hungering."

-- Gandhi (Young Indian, 11.19.1931)

The problem is not that they fail to know,
but that we fail to challenge them
with the opportunity to find out.

I heard the Voice

say this morning, as I sat

on my bike atop a bridge

overlooking this mountain-range-surrounded valley:

When you try to pinpoint the wave

you find a particle

when you try to analyze your inventory of choices

you will discover you have too few or none at all

when you attempt to comprehend

or express

some ultimate grounding

the Unmoved-mover

a universal foundation

you will find yourself unable to catch up with it

it will fall out

right under your feet.

It is the unique
behavior of humans
to
create
and posit somewhere
a reason for our actions
or our thoughts
or feelings
in order
to find
one
when
we
believe we
need it.

By lack

of a

singular

vessel;

in virtue of

the collapse and

expansion

of

influences,

of conversion;

the air does not

fill my lungs

the words fall

not from my mouth

but

supplement,

transmogrify,

the expanse.

Translation

is migration;

there

are not

as many

words for

snow

as there are

flakes

that fall in

the arctic

sky.

There comes the moment:

you are somewhere you've never been before

or maybe you've been there a hundred times before

you try something you never tried before

or maybe compared to every time you've tried it

you do something

some odd little thing

different

your feet become roots in the ground

your hand quivers

your upper body jolts

or a bizarre taste spreads

throughout the recesses of your mouth

the depth envelopes you

it takes you in and raises you

years of life in just a

moment

you can see within that glimpse

of a glitch

that

one moment

you can see

even with your eyes closed.

女子の涙には

教師の僕が

対等にならせちゃって。

please turn your speakers up for this one

Dear Friend
find me right here
find me
right now
I am
spellbound
gutted removed
without a past
thereby too
with no expla
nation
for my future.

mouths talk
tongues
speak
and
teeth nash
The lips are without
a function.
There are
no faces.

Swallow always
swallow.

And let your hands
do the talking;

one is no-
thing
with out
them.
lost.

The discrepancy between
one
and multiple
lives is one as well
between statehood and
change.
A fascination
with the universal singular
demands a heaven.
Attention to
the impermanence within
heat & movement
characterizes
borderlessness
and
metamorph
osis.
Thriving by the heat and cold
our dead remind us of
our living.

The truth doesn't change
the truth
is change.

An interesting discovery: the past,
comprised of memories
and
incarnate
material shifts,
can most direcly
be altered
perhaps
through our dreams.


I now
again
practice flying,
and the speed
and stamina of my run
has rewritten the
history
of my childhood character,
through a time 'relived'
for this
very purpose.

An important lesson in
日本人心理学:
the
裏表
individual stands
in distinction
to he who is
本音　・　多々前.
Unlike the latter,
whose actions
and words
remain disparate by habit, he is not burdened
by an inside
and outside,
a
front
and
back.
He exists
instead
in a single dimension,
an honesty incarnate.
From this standpoint, he lacks the

complexity
of multifarious levels
and convoluted circuitry inherent to
the permutations
within a
dichotomous structure
between
what one says and what
one does.
Instead,
he is ingrained
with the
complexity
that substitutes bureaucracy,
one that represents the non-dualist,
rhizomic
philo
sophy
of the
sayer-doer,
the ordination of the
心.

It's a
real problem
for
the
writing
prolific:
we leave
our trail
wherever
we
go
.

Just across the way
from me
there is
what appears to be
a
crematorium.
Its smoke has charred
the rim of its
column
and floats just
above
the
roofs of our houses
toward the
wall of
black mountains
nearby.
These
reach up
toward the colored
clouds,
thus simul taneously
touching life
and
passively
encountering
death,
recalling
the stature of the samurai.
Hereby the
local
morgue
feeds our
archetypal
imposition as
well as our
scenic
constitution.

Parallel and fragile
are these times.
The destiny
of one
with the
shifting
of the continents.
Can't you smell the
burnt leaves of tea
that motion
the
slow breath of the jihad?

christian doing

from journal entry, 6.4月

Luther understood: no matter how diligently, how strenuously your fight for goodness and purity (at least their less popular forms) might be, there is no salvation by these deeds alone. Try as I might, I cannot fight -- and certainly cannot win -- every battle for a mindful earth-society. Purity is not only beyond our reach: it is not even in our field of vision

Instead, it is invisibly inherent to the manner of our reaching. In being so caught up in trying to become pure (in the more popular sense), we lose our insight to how. How do we make our children smile? We give them chocolate Easter eggs, over which they laugh, and embrace you, and become the star feature for Nestle's advertisement. Is it important for us to know that that chocolate was processed from cocoa beans imported from a country that employs children with little or no choice to work under brutal and inhumane conditions (that they cannot get adults to work under!) to gather them? The moment we become aware of this, the purity of the popular (simultaneously, of the ignorant) vanishes from their smiles, for the systemic violence that purported such purity is smeared across their mouths and between their teeth -- dark and vile.

No -- a purity of ends (which has not even an ontology per individual) cannot justify our means. We cannot truly expect to enter the Kingdom if our eyes are cast only to the clouds. Furthermore, we cannot call ourselves true Christians (as in those who follow Christ, in thought and action) if we believe that by our deeds alone we are saved. We must purify our intentions. By this, one cannot say, 'I had only meant to make my child happy in giving her chocolate,' if we do not further intend to stop or to invest in only organic sweets. Good intention can only beget good intention. If we mean to do good, we must carry it out to the furthest extents of our awareness and beyond the conventional understanding of what is pure and impure.

And by what are we saved? It is only by good intention that we can truly create good results. As it is, this intention requires the totality of one's awareness and consequent compassion. And such awareness is beget only by and event of grace. Indeed, it is only by God's grace that we can be saved. Let us never stop reaching.


>>><<<


and there continues to be the opportunity for 'christians' to learn from 'non-christians' -- beyond the conventional understanding of faith being personally significant (if it all possible) without affirmative experience: "The Buddhist point of view is that we do not have to believe in anything we cannot experience for ourselves. When asked, 'How do we know whose teachings to believe?' Buddha replied, 'Do not believe something to be true just because it is spread by word of mouth, practiced as a tradition or sensationally spread far and wide. [...]'" (more, click on 'Believer Profile' toward the bottom)

eclectic past

those of you who know who i am may or may not care to look around at the most recent added link -- Eclectic Travelers. of course, like always, it's never really me anymore.


また変わってきた。なんども変わりなおしたのだね。

the vibrating of sky and clouds

today's teachings, too, are a bit overdue. these are from bhante on march 21st last week...

Once there were two monks who conversed about enlightenment. They corresponded the sky to mind and the clouds to thoughts. The first monk believed that we should look past the clouds to try to see the sky through them; that is, that we should focus only on mind and ignore thoughts. The second rebuked that we should watch the clouds to find the empty spaces in between where we can expand; that is, that we should focus on thoughts to better see and understand the mind. One monk represented the Mahayama tradition of Buddhism. The other represented the Theravada tradition. In the end, both became enlightened -- both were essentially right.

We must remember that the tradition is not the Buddha's teachings. However, it can help us learn it the lessons within the teachings. Expanding our meditation beyond our breathing exercises, ask yourself, as the monks in the story did, ‘how am I thinking right now’? Just observe it how you think. There is no need for judgment, no 'good' and 'bad’; in fact, judgment can hinder how well we can observe our thinking.

If during your observations you see something harmful, acknowledge it and consider avoiding it. If something is helpful, acknowledge it and affirm it. This is the way of cleaning the mind.

bhante then went on to teach us a vocal technique to help us focus our minds and tune in to the moment during our meditations. many of us are familiar with the verbal chant ‘ohm’. in this technique, we work with each of its three syllables: ‘oh’, ‘ah’ and ‘mn’. we begin by taking a deep breath and slowly sounding the ‘oh’ syllable, slowly and all the way through our exhalation. we sound this syllable three times in this way, then carry on to the next one, ‘ah’ three times, and then three ‘mn’s. finally, we chant the full ohm three times, separating as we did each syllable throughout the exhalation: ‘oh-ah-mn’. when you get a whole room of people doing this, each in tune to the other as to when to change the sound and when to end before the next breath, a most awesome chorus seems to vibrate the whole room, and i remember thinking, as i sat in participation, how far the sound seemed from anything human i’ve experienced.

essential message

the teachings i'm sharing today are from a visit on march 14 by venerable ani pema, who taught in place of bhante (who was visiting cancer patients in canada) that evening. let me start with a short biography before moving into her teachings.

Ven. Ani Pema was born in India and studied in a Catholic school through her childhood, of which she said she received a good education. In 1988, she came to the United States to visit a Benedictine community for five months. Over time, she began to feel that Christianity was overall something of an extensive misinterpretation of the Benedictine tradition and teachings. One day, Ani Pema saw the Dalai Lama and from that moment on wanted to become a Buddhist nun (which she later felt had been her destiny all along as determined by a previous life connection she witnessed). She became a Buddhist nun at fifteen years old and immediately began to acquire responsibilities she had never had before.

Today, Ani Pema works in the community of Mankato, training students in meditation and studying with Native Americans in shamanism. She believes that she has made a beneficial habit of asking for blessings in the holy places of wherever she is, Christian, Buddhist or other.

Gathering the lessons from her multicultural life experiences, Ven. Ani Pema teaches that even among different religions there is an essential message whose tenets they all tend to share: loving kindness, compassion, and wisdom. These tenets are what give us values and eventually bring us to enlightenment. The message they comprise teaches us yet another valuable lesson, the subject of today's teaching: nun, monk, or layman, there will always be emotions and suffering and pain. Against common assumptions, the lives of nuns and monks too have their sufferings. Perhaps the difference we can observe, however, is that they particularly practice and take the opportunity to overcome their sufferings, to gain lessons from their turmoil. This is in fact hardly a selfish endeavor on their end, for the lessons they discover can be used and practiced by all who listen.

As spiritual practitioners, we must realize that suffering is not negative. Sufferings provide us the opportunity to learn and discover enlightenment. It is indeed favorable to have these sufferings to overcome for this purpose.

We are most often burdened by the five poisons,[1] so we must train through awareness to learn of the essential message (loving kindness, compassion, and wisdom). We must learn forgiveness like that which Christ demonstrated. For those who we often think of as ‘evil’ are in fact those worst poisoned, trapped in their own prisons, and thus need our forgiveness more than anyone else. The peaceful demonstrations of the Tibetans in their conflict with China today provides a good example of this. In the same manner that we should be grateful for our sufferings for the opportunity toward enlightenment they provide, so should we recognize our enemies as our best teachers, for it is from their poison-induced mistakes that we learn what not to do.

Acknowledging our sufferings and our enemies as our teachers is the way of discipline for the spiritual practitioner. Among the six realms of existence,[2] humans are the most fortunate (especially with having body, intelligence, and etc.). Through these lessons and capabilities, only we among the beings of the realms have the opportunity to reach enlightenment.

Through our training, however, we must remember that it is not our responsibility to worry on others, for this only causes more confusion for us all. Whether we are on the right path and using our time meaningfully is our business. Where we worry on others, we condone expectations, which become obstacles to our practice. We must instead remain diligent to our own path, which eventually brings insight into the essential message. The way is always a discipline. Remember that Buddha too was like us in understanding life as a never-ending practice.

In our diligence to our path, we may not see the full extent of our work as it affects others around us and far from us. However, once we have committed dutifully to our path, secure in our diligence, then, we can become closer to one another to generate the loving kindness we discover through it. Thus, the value of intimacy is to share the benefit you reap with others through the diligence you alone must sow.

This benefit can come from anywhere, depending on who we are; you do not have to be Buddhist or Christian necessarily so long as the path you follow brings you to what is holy. As not all of life is suffering, we should remember as well our good qualities such as our Buddha nature, our ‘God-in-us’. At the very least, our training brings us personal satisfaction, but through it we also encounter this potential to become like Buddha, to become like God. In becoming Buddha or God, the essential message works through us into those around us in loving kindness, and so we build our pure motivations to help ourselves for the sake of helping others. Like the always smiling Dalai Lama, we too can create positive energy and harmony through our training. This is the power of our discipline and our prayer.

---

[1] Confusion (Skt.: moha), pride (mana), envy (irsya), hatred (dvesha), and desire (raga). (http://www.khandro.net/about_numbers.htm)

[2] Gods (devas), demi-gods (ashuras), humans, ghosts, tormented/‘hell’ beings, and animals. (http://www.khandro.net/about_numbers.htm)

明るくても、暗くても

thanks to BibleGateway.com

Psalm 139 (from New International Version [NIV])
copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society

For the director of music. Of David. A psalm.

1 O Lord, you have searched me
and you know me.

2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.

3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.

4 Before a word is on my tongue
you know it completely, O LORD.

5 You hem me in—behind and before;
you have laid your hand upon me.

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.

7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?

8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,

10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.

11 If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,"

12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

[...]

明るくても、暗くても、神光に導いてもらうさ。

standing fast

i've wanted to share some insights by bonhoeffer i've picked up through reading his Letters & Papers from Prison (p.348-9 and 4-5, respectively). his tribulation at the time of these writings is evident in the title of the book: bonhoeffer was imprisoned for evidence of his aid to jews escaping the nazis' 'Final Solution.' (later we've also discovered his intimate participation in a conspiracy -- with his brother klaus and his brother-in-law hans von dohnanyi -- to assassinate hitler.) from his cell, he informed his loved ones of his condition and of his theorizing in regard to the state of the ("religionless"-inclining) christianity of our age.

(please, by the way, forgive the gender-biased vocabulary: it certainly isn't [nor shouldn't be] limited to men.)

at the end of this post, i've included a short report i've written concerning a few key themes in bonhoeffer's theology of this time of incarceration.....


Christians and Pagans

I
Men go to God when they are sore bestead,
Pray to him for succour, for his peace, for bread,
For mercy for them sick, sinning, or dead;
All men do so, Christian and unbelieving.

2
Men go to God when he is sore bestead,
Find him poor and scorned, without shelter or bread,
Whelmed under weight of the wicked, the weak, the dead;
Christians stand by God in his hour of grieving.

3
God goes to every man when sore bestead,
Feeds body and spirit with his bread;
For Christians, pagans alike he hangs dead,
And both alike forgiving.◊



Who stands fast? (from "After Ten Years")

The great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical
concepts. For evil to appear disguised as light, charity, historical
necessity, or social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethical concepts, while for the Christian who bases his life on the Bible it merely confirms the fundamental wickedness of evil.

The ‘reasonable’ people’s failure is obvious. With the best intentions and a naive lack of realism, they think that with a little reason they can bend back into position the framework that has got out of joint. In their lack of vision they want to do justice to all sides, and so the conflicting forces wear them down with nothing achieved. Disappointed by the world’s unreasonableness, they
see themselves condemned to ineffectiveness; they step aside in resignation or collapse before the stronger party.

Still more pathetic is the total collapse of moral fanaticism. The fanatic thinks that his single-minded principles qualify him to do battle with the powers of evil; but like a bull he rushes at the red cloak instead of the person who is holding it; he exhausts himself
and is beaten. He gets entangled in non-essentials and falls into the trap set by cleverer people.

Then there is the man with a conscience, who fights single-handed against heavy odds in situations that call for a decision. But the scale of the conflicts in which he has to choose — with no advice or support except from his own conscience - tears him to pieces. Evil approaches him in so many respectable and seductive disguises that his conscience becomes nervous and vacillating, till at last he contents himself with salved instead of a clear conscience, so that he lies to his own conscience in order to avoid despair; for a man whose only support is his conscience can never realize that a bad conscience may be stronger and more wholesome than a deluded one.

From the perplexingly large number of possible decisions, the way of duty seems to be the sure way out. Here, what is commanded is accepted as what is most certain, and the responsibility for it rests on the commander, not on the person commanded. But no one who confines himself to the limits of duty ever goes so far as to venture, on his sole responsibility, to act in the only way that makes it possible to score a direct hit on evil and defeat it. The man of duty will in the end have to do his duty by the devil too.

As to the man who asserts his complete freedom to stand four-square to the world, who values the necessary deed more highly than an unspoilt conscience or reputation, who is ready to sacrifice a barren principle for a fruitful compromise, or the barren wisdom of a middle course for a fruitful radicalism — let him beware lest his freedom should bring him down. He will assent to what is bad so as to ward off something worse, and in doing so he will no longer be able to realize that the worse, which he wants to avoid, might be the better. Here we have the raw material of tragedy.

Here and there people flee from public altercation into the sanctuary of private virtuousness. But anyone who does this must shut his mouth and his eyes to the injustice around him. Only at the cost of self-deception can he keep himself pure from the contamination arising from responsible action. In spite of all that he does, what he leaves undone will rob him of his peace of mind. He will either go to pieces because of this disquiet, or become the most hypocritical of Pharisees.

Who stands fast? Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God -- the responsible man, who tried to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God. Where are these responsible people?◊

On Bonhoeffer

I.

Who is the responsible individual? Bonhoeffer establishes Europe’s (particularly Germany’s) post-war survivors as his subjects, whose “fellowship of spirit and community of life[…]have been proved and preserved throughout these years” (3). We, then, as these subjects, are asked to look with him at the situation within the changing times and ask ourselves collectively ‘who is the responsible person?’

Furthermore, to fully address this question, Bonhoeffer tells us that, “we are moving towards a completely religionless time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious [anymore]” (279). Thus, we must also ask, as responsible persons (if indeed that), ‘what is a “religionless” Christianity’?

II.

The “responsible man […]tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God” (5). It is the person “whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, or his virtue” but takes responsible action by sacrificing all of these points in his “faith and exclusive allegiance to God.” Anyone who is willing even to become a sinner in acting in her faith, in following her calling from God, is the responsible person and may have solace in God’s promise of mercy for her. (6)

As such, the responsible person must ask the ultimate question of “how the coming generation is to live” (7). Times have changed, says Bonhoeffer, and we must observe the state of religion as it loses its grounding. He feels the weight of not understanding “what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is for us today” (279), and contemplates how those words used by theologians and the pious that once held the be-all meaning for us all now do not convey what we need to understand these realities. Christianity, as the form or “religious a priori” (280), has maybe been the greatest form of religion; regardless, though, the absence of religious response to the events of the war and its evils is a sure sign that this form no longer holds a meaningful content.

Granted we are capable of being responsible people, we must consider what this means for the future, what the instantiation of a “religionless Christianity” might look like and how to address, then, God’s unique transcendence to “the midst of our life” (282) in the community.

III.

The significance of these problematics concerns the role of God and Christ in the emerging age. As Bonhoeffer says, “[r]eligious people speak of God when human knowledge […] has come to an end, or when human resources fail – in fact it is always the dues ex machina” (281) which exploits either our boundaries or our weaknesses. The religious people (the pious) distorts the community by founding itself on its edge (at the boundary lines) instead of at its center (where the true church is and should be). It cannot, in this way, (unless it changes) provide us the depth of meaning in God and Christ as it used to, and so we are left to our own resources.

loving kindness

this weekend gave me the opportunity to help bhante by manning a booth for taking pledges and donations for the meditation center -- and displaying several splendid piles of books. i'd never seen any of them before. i credit my focus on the more mahayana branch forms of buddhism to be a culprit in my ignorance concerning the 'smaller vehicle,' the theravadan teachings of the buddha. this is bhante's field of study and practice, and getting to help him give out books and take donations and pledges for the meditation center he's composing, i'm thankful to get to interact with this slightly more foreign kind of lessons.

after contributing a bit of monetary means to the end myself, i was sure to take some of his selections home with me to give a closer look. a couple are particularly appealing, including The Buddha and His Dhamma by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, A Tree in a Forest (A Collection of Ajahn Chah's Similes) edited by Dhamma Garden, and What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula (all which may end up on the 'engaged reading' list if i ever get past a mere skimming of their contents). i'm intrigued by how much more attention this tradition seems to give to the scriptures, compared to the 'do-it-yourself' ambience of the zen (禅) influences i've known. there's still, always, so much more to learn.

on to this week's reflections by bhante, march 7:


We must remember: the rendition of meditation we so often see in pop culture -- that is, through television, magazines, and advertisement -- is not representative of the meditation Buddhism teaches, nor the breathing meditation we wish to practice. Neither is it something altogether esoteric from the world; it is something we do in as action response to the observation of our wandering mind. We do not meditate to become like the people we see in the ads, but to habitually exercise our control over mind. The moment that we feel that our involvement with a thought is more important than our practice -- this is the moment, over all others, for us to let it go, and we do this by meditating.

There is a story of an old man who interrogated the Buddha regarding happiness. The Buddha told him to venture out into the world and find out. On the man's journey, he met a young girl, whom he asked regarding happiness. She told him that happiness is love. He then carried on to meet a king, who told him happiness was surrendering. Finally, a passing soldier confided that happiness was nothing other than peace.

The young girl's answer, love, comprises today's lesson. Love is a single word with many, varied meanings. A sense of love we can all likely identify with, however, is one that is in near proximity to its seemed opposition: hate. How is this so? How is it we can feel such love for someone, to then be capable of turning against them -- or them against you -- in the flash of a moment's passing? How is it that we can feel such love for our parents, our siblings, our children, and yet discover tempered resentment toward the object of our passions, our lover, our partner?

Love is certainly emotion; we feel it in the presense of someone we care for. Just as well, we can feel hate, and even for the same person for whom we felt love. Love of this sort is addressed in the teachings of the Buddha in the same fashion other emotions are. They are all capable of controlling us, puppeteering us, making us lose sight of what is happening beyond our tantrums and yearnings. Love of this sort, like all things, is subject to change, and like everything else, it does just this. Love transforms into one of two particular other emotions (though anyone can also easily experience both of these at a given time): pain, and fear.

Where love induces pain or fear, one can be sure to trace it to a fundamental problematic for all sufferings: attachments. Where love really takes the form of lust (though we may not immediately recognize it), one experiences attachment to the object of passions, which brings suffering as both loved and lover change through time. This is a limited love, one that can easily, and intermittently, become hatred for the other, a self-induced estrangement by the nature of attachment.

However, if one really come to understand love, as we strive to do in our personal development through meditation, we can recognize a righteous sort of love, one that bears no hint of attachment but merely an unconditional respect for one's partner. There is another story that the wife the Buddha left in his search for truth eventually became a nun under his teachings and practiced techniques of personal development as we do today.

As the two became older, the Buddha's wife realized that she would soon die and sook the Buddha out to tell him of her vision. The Buddha, whose immense respect for his wife helped him see her unconditional respect for him, weighed this new information and decided he too would leave this world. Together, they escaped samsara, leaving with what they had the good fortune to discover before their end: their undying love that, like them, took no part in the attachments of those who suffer, but in the transcendence of those who recognize the unconditional truth.

If one can cultivate a love of this second sort, they will never encounter through it the pains and fears the former love entails. The love between the Buddha and his wife is the sort that a parent feels for their children, or a sibling for another sibling. It stems from the righteous act of giving and forgiving, and in this way love resembles no emotion but deliberate, intentional action. This comparison demonstrates the difference between having love and giving love; for one can never truly 'have' anything, including love, but can always be in the ever perpetual and ever rewarding process of giving. Giving is kindness, and together we recognize the manifest characteristic of unconditional love: loving kindness.


bhante then ended with a song in his native tongue, which seemed to last forever. it was beautiful, and it made me wonder if the buddha had ever been inclined to sing that way in the midst of his enlightened understanding.

これは歌をうたうようのための感応は知慮のおかげでみつけるぞ。

progressive events

a dedication this evening to progressive events...




8th March, marked International Women's Day. Churches, aid agencies and human rights activists joined the voice of all women across the world to fight for equality and protection. Yesterday, saw massive campaigns being held in both Western and Eastern countries.

Women’s rights have been, in fact improved a lot throughout the past few decades, proved by the increasing role of women in society. However, sexual abuse, violence, human trafficking and many other issues continue to exploit the rights of females in many developing countries or in times of war. ...

-- Christian Today


two sites devoted to revolutionary design community (both thanks to Inhabitat)...

- The Urban Voids competition, an idea generating process, is the second phase of Philadelphia LANDvisions. For this phase of the competition, entrants are free to suggest program elements that best express their idea and are in keeping with the competition aim (specific program elements will be developed in the next phase). ... -- Urban Voids
- The Front Studio team is among five finalists. As a full-service architecture firm that always keeps at least one foot in the speculative and conceptual realm, they have both the technical credentials and the imaginitive wherewithal to pull this whole thing off. ... -- Inhabitat


and finally, a little more scientific demonstration of genetic diversity and geographical differentiation (though it still shouldn't go to say that race is anything much more than a sociopolitical instantiation -- also see "Gender and the Deconstruction of the Race Concept").

surrendering versus self-victimizing

surrendering to christ and self-victimizing oneself before christ are two very
different things, and that difference must be recognized. self-victimizing before christ is to
intentionally bear the punishment of suffering we cause one another. but to
surrender to christ is to open one's heart out to the world, ready and willing,
without a motive for self-advantage, to follow one's god-chosen path to helping
relieve that suffering -- to eventually reunite, as we might say, with god. surrendering to
christ means allowing the possibility -- the likeliness even -- that one is wrong,
such that eventually we might all endorse in the teleology that there may one day be no wrong.

mind and mirrors

a second sharing of bhante's teachings, from feb.28:

What is mind? Is it of the heart? The head? Some say both. But we can really best understand the mind by our emotions. When you become angry, you think and feel in anger. When you are sad, the entire world seems sad to you. Our emotions shape our world according to their orchestration.

The mind, says Buddha, has three specific attributes: (1) it is always running and quick; (2) it is never in the same place moment to moment; and (3) it is completely without form. In this way, it is a distraction, a faculty of control by the emotions over our sensibilities. We cannot see the world clearly by fault of the mind.

In a story of a group of monks attempting to identify mind in competition for the position of the monastry's head master, it was mistaken that the mind is the mirror to ourselves. Only the monastry chef, completely unconcerned with any aspiration for the position, conceived correctly that the mind is in fact the dust on the mirror that is ourselves.

Those who understand the Way can clean the mirror of mind, for only then can we see our reflection and who we really are. Until then, we are slaves to the puppetry of other forces and particularly our emotions. One reason is that we are cognizant of qualities of pleasure versus pain and naturally incline towards pleasure and away from pain. But when we look into ourselves deeply, looking past the dust of mind controlled by determining forces of pain and pleasure, we can see that these feelings are the effects of such causes.

We experience pain or pleasure by effect. Meditating and looking deeply disciplines us to identify pain before its effect, freeing us from the constraints of manipulating forces, freeing us from the role as the puppet.

Noticing our comforts and discomforts around whom we are with is a good way to observe how we react to different stimuli and are manipulated by the causes. Sitting with a group of similarly devoted meditators is recognizably different than sitting, for example, on a public subway train in the heart of Los Angeles. When we are surrounded by strangers, by the unknown, we become anxious and often even scared. We cannot predict what will happen to us, what someone may do to us.

This has intimate connections to our fear of death. But when we come to know ourselves, through wiping the dust off the mirror and seeing our true face, we no longer have to be afraid because we realize that death is not what we thought it was. We see into and past ourselves into the world, and not even death can play a contingent role to our contentment and service in life. When we are ready to die, nothing nor no one can kill us.◊

another transcultural warrior

despite all praise and connections, i have yet to introduce master thich nhat hanh.

Zen Master, poet, peace and human rights activist, Thich Nhat Hanh was born in central Vietnam in 1926 and joined the monkhood at the age of 16. In Saigon in the early 1960's, he founded the School of Youth for Social Services (SYSS), a grass roots relief organization that rebuilt bombed villages, set up schools and medical centers, resettled homeless families, and organized agricultural cooperatives. Rallying some 10,000 student volunteers, the SYSS based its work on the Buddhist principles of non-violence and compassionate action. Despite government denunciation of his activity, Nhat Hanh also founded a Buddhist University, a publishing house, and an influential peace activist magazine in Vietnam. ... -- Mindfulness Bell

hanh is an indirect mentor of mine -- at the very least, a hero passed down by mentors to me. his books -- including Peace is Every Step and No Death, No Fear -- are some of the freshest writings i have encountered among the less hardcore (and often esoteric) works of other buddhists, philosophers, and social activists. they have also been a deep influence to my personal philosophy.


also, a small list of recently added links dedicated to environmental awareness (and not merely the kind the 'environmentalists' advocate):

• Environmental Working Group
• Terrain.org
• Union of Concerned Scientists
  

more to come as i explore these and others

meditation gems

my college has had the honor of holding meditation sessions led by bhante sathi, theravadan buddhist from Subhodaramaya monastry in kandy, sri Lanka, and counselor and teacher of meditation in sri lanka, britain, and the united states.

the following is a paraphrased synopsis by yours truly of sathi's teachings shared with a session group on february 21 (posted with permission of Triple Gem of the North, "a non-profit organization dedicated to the study and practice of the teachings of the Buddha" ):

Meditation comes in many forms -- in fact, there are at least 40 different groups of meditation techniques. Despite that there are techniques that serve a wide range of paranormal utilities -- e.g., extra-sensitivity to light and sound, telepathic communication, consciousness transgression, and so on -- many of today's technologies eliminate any common need for them. Yet, breathing meditation is one that still offers substantial benefits for which modern technology is unable to substitute. Through breathing meditation we autonomously attend to the matter of the ego, of the self, and come to understand the extent of control 'outside' influences have over us. This is the puppet concept. Once we recognize the nature of our ego, we understand the innecessity for control -- puppeteering -- by 'other' forces.

When we sit, our body for the most part does not move. However, our minds appear to travel everywhere, riddled with thoughts, of sounds we are hearing or of the past or future. Yet there is one moving 'bodily' thing that we can attend to as our sanctuary for awareness: our breathing. The breath reminds us of what is in the now, and we are called by it to return our attention away from the animated distractions of the 'mindlessly driven' mind. Once refocused, we recall this practice, this mindful breathing, as a manifestation of our intention for personal development.

We needn't wait for a formal group meeting time to practice breathing meditation. Although group meditation can be an excellent form of support for our cause, to take even five minutes out of our day to bypass other endless exercises (excuses) and perform breathing meditation independently can make a substantive difference in the long-term effects of this practice and awareness within our lives. ◊


...and as bhikku bodhi says in conversation with sathi concerning the nature of buddhism:

"Buddhism is not a matter of a particular culture, but of the truth. We should actually distinguish between 'Buddhism' and the Dhamma. Buddhism is a cultural, historical, and social phenomena; thus we can speak about Sri Lankan Buddhism, Japanese Buddhism, Thai Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism. Or we can speak about Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana Buddhism, etc. But Dhamma/Dharma is not about a culture, or about social phenomena, or about history, but about the truth."

wilderness and the transcultural

william cronon from Uncommon Ground, "The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature":

...[W]ilderness serves as the unexamined foundation on which so many of the quasi-religious values of modern environmentalism rest. The critique of modernity that is one of environmentalism's most important contributions to the moral and political discourse of our time more often than not appeals, explicitly or implicitly, to wilderness as the standard against which to measure the failings of our human world. Wilderness is the natural, unfallen antithesis of an unnatural civilization that has lost its soul. It is a place of freedom in which we can recover the true selves we have lost to the corrupting influences of our artificial lives. Most of all, it is the ultimate landscape of authenticity. Combining the sacred grandeur of the sublime with the primitive simplicity of the frontier, it is the place where we can see the world as it really is, and so know ourselves as we really are -- or ought to be.

But the trouble with wilderness is that it quietly expresses and reproduces the very values its devotees seek to reject. The flight from history that is very nearly the core of wilderness represents the false hope of an escape from responsibility, the illusion that we can somhow wipe clean the slate of our past and return to the tabula rasa that supposedly existed before we began to leave our marks on the world. The dream of an unworked natural landscape is very much the fantasy of people who have never themselves had to work the land to make a living -- urban folk for whom food comes from a supermarket or a restaurant instead of a field, and for whom the wooden houses in which they live and work apparently have no meaningful connection to the forests in which trees grow and die. Only people whose relation to the land was already alienated could hold up wilderness as a model for human life in nature, for the romantic ideology of wilderness leaves precisely nowhere for human beings actually to make their living from the land.

This, then, is the central paradox: wilderness embodies a dualistic vision in which the human is entirely outside the natural. If we allow ourselves to believe that nature, to be true, must also be wild, then our very presence in nature represents its fall. The place where we are is the place where nature is not. If this is so -- if by definition wilderness leaves no place for human beings, save perhaps as contemplative sojourners enjoying their leisurely reverie in God's natural cathedral -- then also by definition it can offer no solution to the environmental and other problems that confront us. To the extent that we celebrate wilderness as the measure with which we judge civilization, we reproduce the dualism that sets humanity and nature at opposite poles. We thereby leave ourselves little hope of discovering what an ethical, sustainable, honorable human place in nature might actually look like.

Worse: the extent that we live in an urban-industrial civilization but at the same time pretend to ourselves that our real home is in the wilderness, to just that extent we give ourselves permission to evade responsibility for the lives we actually lead. ... ◊


...furthermore, here's a link to a most fantastic essay by pramod parajuli concerning a brief history of, what he calls, the "rational" versus "relational" modes of approaching nature, ecosystems, and the economics thereof.

"The whole problem is basically one of lifestyle. There can be no solution unless the conflict between lifestyles, between immediate and future interests, are resolved. Because even when a certain section of the population says the wildlife and forest should be preserved, they have not changed their basic vision of life."

terms and concept he refers to here include
- agro-ecology (such as by wendel berry) -- searches for "a golden mean of stewardship and sustainable use" -- ramachandra guha)
- bioregional consciousness
- deep ecology (arne naess)
- ecological anthropology vs. cultural anthropology
- ecosystem & agro-ecosystem
- ecological ethnicity
- ethno-ecology?
- environmentalism ("what environmentalists defend is the environment but not nature..." -- pramod parajuli)
- foodshed
- restoration and renewal (shiva visvanathan)
- voluntary agrarian simplicity (mahatma gandhi)

i also highly recommend getting a good look at the rest of terrain.org while you're there.



the transcultural antagonism that enters into the ring, where colonialist marginalizations had left many of us feeling safe, must not be taken lightly. we may hold the moneybags, but the tools of service are in fact not tools at all; far from means for humans, they are human beings, and many of them are starving, broke, or flailing helplessly by the undertoe of capitalism towards a maelstrom collapse. the first clues of degeneration appear in the misunderstanding that (once the pocketbooks are closed) comes over the faces of those whose mental images of wilderness aren't accompanied by indigenous conception (as we so often grant them to be). the clues appear in the uprise of empty hands whose only long-term hope for survival now might only lie in a local concession of agro-ecological sustainability. to investigate the clues, we communicate -- and to reverse the process for regeneration, we reflect.

upon reflection, we can see that divisions among the fields, e.g., environmentalism, economics, science, politics, etc., have been conceptually integral to our culture for centuries now, products of our cognitive evolution. now that we must think globally, however, we must face the reality of our limitations, still under the influence of a momentous (mostly still unconscious) colonialist development agenda that has avoided memetic extinction. we must redesign ourselves -- better yet: be redesigned collectively, intra- and interculturally both, by the process that we can call formal learning. (this is the heart of the fight for education.) awareness and mindfulness make us better communicators and reflectors. this is, after all, our only hope as well for a meaningful future.

why egological monk?

'egological' is a term i picked up from mark sacks' Objectivity and Insight (2003). briefly, it represents the logic of perspectivism 'inherent' to the human condition of the self. "the egological conception [of the subject] regards the subject as one whose core normative structures are autonomous -- independent of contextual features -- and so attributes rational autonomy to the subject" [146]. a downfall (among many): the objective world can't be really known by the subject, nor by the world at large (thus, varying degrees of a disappointing skepticism). so, why did i pick such a drab and apparently pessimistic title?

the subject/object divide remains one of the longest-standing disputes in philosophy. it's approach seems most often irrefutable (at the very least, but modern sciences), yet it has failed for some time now to deliver any appropriate results for a developing and reconceptualizing community now coming to terms with spirituality, intimate sociality, and even quantum mechanics. yes, we westerners are cognitively different -- there's no sidestepping that -- and one of the obstacles that we have 'made for ourselves' through our memetic evolution includes this trap, a gut reaction to how the world surely must be. but it is turning up empty more often than not nowadays. fortunately, the divide has found its overlaps too many times, as brave thinkers carefully step over the gulf edge to find the distance between edges supported by a glass flooring. looking through the glass, and abandoning our rational objectives for even a moment, we can see the nature of our condition and forgive (again, for even a moment) the inequity of its calibre.

do we forgive this through ignorance? avoidance? i don't think so. one can't see the condition until after having acknowledged the metaphysical divide we've posited. those who are willing to be mindful of it and not give up can experience the effect.

the monk knows this experience, or desires to. the monk buries himself in the occupation of contemplation and surrender. were s/he already God, already the Buddha, already the Way, s/he would cease to be the monk -- s/he would disappear right there in an instant into the unbounded conscious immanence of Being. as yet, though, his logic still revolves around his isolated ego, his ideas and words still emanate from some 'self,' his thoughts are still in some way 'his.' thus, the monk continues to breathe and reflect, even without thought by some scarce moments of grace, sometimes without a goal or a desire, until...

an integrationist objective

an introduction to an apparently amazing human being, hyun kyung chung (if the link doesn't work, look at today's comments). her recent visit to, and conference in, japan, despite her conditioned biases against it, demonstrates a courage that the international warrior must model for our globalizing societies.

if integrationism is the manner and method, sycretism is the expected result. knowing this, we needn't fear it.

the how and why

this is another past journal entry, composed during the throes of thesis writing. it's a bit esoteric, but hopefully some of the links (and later posts) will clarify it some for now. at some point, i will also figure out a way to publish (or link to a published version of) the thesis for more precise reference.


it's not so much the what of technology that should concern us (of western cultural descent) -- but the how and why.

granting that the natural meta-evolution of replicators includes a propensity towards a digitally-encoded replication stage -- an 'immortality' such that the most information transmitted with the smoothest efficiency is attained --, we must be prepared to deal with the possibility of an 'enhanced consciousness' -- that is, a merging of human and computer memetic-replicative capabilities to comprise a digitally-encoded medium via electronica with a strong biological and spiritually meaningful base. it's severely difficult for me to imagine anything less "natural" ('Natural,' if you will) than what would consist of a complete reformation of our technological progress (perhaps including at least a little technological abolishment even) to where Nature could regain a dominant role and influence, as it does in 'less developed' communities. however, i'm thinking that i also need to seriously consider the power and signficance of this forming integrationist philosophy, and reflect on more 'leftitst' perspectives concerning the environmental movement. for the non-environmentalist and the extreme (or at least maybe conservative) environmentalist have directly opposed agendas and views -- but this opposition best manifests the dichotomous argument therein. one sees environmental issue as an obligated requirement, and the other sees it as a necessary and avoidable standard. while i obviously lean towards the latter, i recognize that neither perspective embraces the advantageously efficient and mutally beneficial integration of economy, ehtics, and the environment. neither extremist side is sufficient, and no middle way could ever remedy a phenomenon based on a dualistic illusion.

the model must be transcended and the actualized agenda expedited by the integrationaist method. only in this way can Transhumanism be acceptable -- in fact Transhumanism can be a truly beneficial transition in the the hands of 'more developed' communities provided that indeed a major reformation does happen, where responsibility is enacted by every individual. it must be a responsibility for the psychological, physical, spiritual, and environmental health of the self (as far as a model 'self' is the center of an individual's conceptual rudiments), for our influence and power and wealth. when true responsibility is underway, 'rights' (as in human rights) will be an obsolete tool for justice (which continues today to ring with little other than a tone of egoistic and egocentric justification -- for the sake of a "controllable social order"). it will be its own means and end for simultaneous betterment of self and neighbor -- for it will be, finally, (as the greatest mystics and miracle-workers have seen it) an integration of the two. (altruism and egoism too contain the extremist absurdity of opposition dualism that is neither here nor there in enlightening us with a realistic plan for action.)

so, Transhumanism may hold some potential for global improvment if it is mutualistically initiated with the integrationist manner of health and conceptualization (thought/action).

Intimacy or Integrity intro

as planned, i will begin publishing 'cliffnote' outlines to some of the chapters i've read that seem especially pertinent to the Path. today's is from Intimacy or Integrity by thomas p. kasulis. i have only read about four-and-a-half out of its six chapters -- but i think its introduction gives a helpful account of what inhibiting obstacles the intercultural philosopher is having to overcome: remnants of the hardcore rationalists, positivists and underdeveloped pragmatists.

here, kasulis distinguishes the universalists from the differentialists (in their extreme forms) and what can we do to avoid making the same sweeping errors of logic.

as one can likely guess, outlines like this can never substitute for the original material -- the purpose to my positing these is to illumine the direction i'm going (and the nature of the wind that blows me), provide relevant and professional input to this weblog endeavor, and perhaps, possibly, ignite a spark of interest in a subject in a reader (and become, in that way, one with the wind).


Intimacy or Integrity (2002), T. Kasulis

introduction

• (extremist) universalists - inappreciative of cultural differences
• (extremist) differentialists - often "ignore that communication and understanding often cross the boundaries of otherness" (6) (that translation is possible); also, "the very claim about the impossibility of universalizing is itself a universalization" (7)
  
• both approaches universalize

• there should instead be recognized a difference between understanding and persuasion (we can understand but not necessarily be sympathetic towards x)
• further, there's a difference between a different language and a different potential-sympathetic composition (one undermines understanding; the other, trust)

• 2 problems with the holistic comparison (e.g., all americans vs. all japanese)
• 1 - it can't do justice to the complexity and diversity of a culture
• generalizations are always distortions -- but all articulations are generalizations of some sort (K: thus, in part, a linguistic demonstration of memetic evolution)
• without generalizations, people "cannot proceed in their quest for understanding" (8)
• generalizaton is not equivalent to universal qualifier (generalizations can't be "refuted by a simple counterexample"; 8)
• generalizations always have exceptions
• only way to refute a generalization is to find a better one
• 2 - analysis of either whole would seem to be infinite
• "superficial similarity, upon closer analysis, dissolves into incomparables and difference
• reiterative components compose different patters of consistency
• cultural recursivity -- "a repetitive pattern out of which the whole is constructed" (10)

• "If we can isolate a reiterative factor in different kinds of cultures, perhaps we can also talk holistically about their similarities and differences" (11); the recursive cultural patters are the 'intimacy' and 'integrity orientations

"The role of the philosopher is not just to analyze but also to give us better tools for analysis." the purpose: that "communication and understanding across cultures will be assisted." (11)



( 'K:' = personal relevant contribution

i am aware that my bullet-form is probably unorthodox. forgive me, but this is the way that makes sense to me.)


国際化のため、いろいろな理論に全国用され、結果を伝えるべき。

eclectic links 1

a tribute to some worthwhile links (thanks to fellow bloggers)...

• an excellent article concerning memetics and primitivism
  
• a little over a month old, but it appears that meditation practice has made ABC news
• on that note, a glimpse at ken wilber's practical dedication
• an upcoming addition to an apparently successful What the Bleep cinematographic series
• and a meme media lab at Hokkaido University, Japan

emerging patience

some of these entries are in fact older journal entries. in trying to establish a manageable grounds for explanation, i feel that i need to share a few past thoughts, mostly for clarifying's sake.


as with any 'new' science, meme theory needs time. the Metameme (Grant 2005) reveals the circular nature of the theory: if meme theory is honestly viable, the character of the meme of meme theory must as well be accepted into the system and understood to be itself included in the evolutionary process it denotes. note that while we weren't even sure for a while if the proper location of a gene was on a DNA molecule or a protein, it is safe to assume by science that the location didn't change before nor after our discovery that it is/was DNA. however, memes have a very different nature by comparison in that -- even if there is a location to be found, and we can assume is the same in pre- and post-discovery (at least relatively) -- our very means of analyzing are in fact of the same sort that is the object of study. the 'gene-meme' for instance might best be described from a memetical perspective as the meme/memeplex that is our knowledge database of genes and genetics. a Metameme however must try to include in every facet data of itself and its kind (memes). thus, we cannot expect our study of it to too well resemble our naturalistic study via the science we've developed up to this time -- at least, the study cannot be exclusive of its 'physical' expressions (its objective memetic phenotype, or sociotype) to its entire subjective and intersubjective criteria (Heylighen 2001) as well.

so, on top of the effort of possible scientific experimentation, we must expect even more concerning how to experiment, regarding all aspects of the theory. and this will take time. let's be patient.