“The men of old knew that life comes without warning, and as suddenly goes. They denied none of their natural inclinations, and repressed none of their bodily desires. They never felt the spur of fame. They sauntered through life gathering its pleasures as the impulse moved them.” – Yang Chu
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“Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure. But unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer.” ~ Shunryu Suzuki
“Dark flow” is no fluke, suggests a new study that strengthens the case for unknown, unseen “structures” lurking on the outskirts of creation. In 2008 scientists reported the discovery of hundreds of galaxy clusters streaming in the same direction at more than 2.2 million miles (3.6 million kilometers) an hour.
This mysterious motion can’t be explained by current models for distribution of mass in the universe. So the researchers made the controversial suggestion that the clusters are being tugged on by the gravity of matter outside the known universe.
Now the same team has found that the dark flow extends even deeper into the universe than previously reported: out to at least 2.5 billion light-years from Earth.
Via: National Geographics
Interresting BBC (?) documentory about the great William S. Burroughs (1914-1997).
Via U B U W E B – Film & Video: William S. Burroughs – Burroughs The Movie (1985).
“The worship of Pan never has died out,” said Mortimer. “Other newer gods have drawn aside his votaries from time to time, but he is the Nature-God to whom all must come back at last. He has been called the Father of all the Gods, but most of his children have been stillborn.”
The entire star explodes, the largest explosion ever recorded: a supergiant star two hundred times bigger than the sun utterly obliterated by runaway thermonuclear reactions triggered by gamma ray-driven antimatter production. The resulting blast was visible for months because it unleashed a cloud of radioactive material over fifty times the size of our own star, giving off a nuclear fission glow visible from galaxies away.
Read More http://www.dailygalaxy.com
The Devil is living in the Vatican, says the Pope’s chief exorcist. Well if that’s the case, burn down the Vatican and burn the hypocrits that live there. Problem solved.
Let us strangle the last king with the guts of the last priest – Denis Diderot
1917: Promotional portrait of American actor Theda Bara (1885 – 1955) wearing an Egyptian headdress and breast plates with a snake design for director J Gordon Edwards’ film, ‘Cleopatra’.
(Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Winter pruritis can be quite uncomfortable and annoying, since it is often accompanied by chronic itching and, sometimes, inflammation and swelling….
As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.” – Henry David Thoreau
And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine, are in their feasts: but they give no thought to the work of the Lord,
and they are not interested in what his hands are doing.
Isaiah, Chapter 5, Verse 12
Beautifull digital art work from Alessandro Bavari
For more than three and a half centuries, the death of René Descartes one winter’s day in Stockholm has been attributed to the ravages of pneumonia on a body unused to the Scandinavian chill. But in a book released after years spent combing the archives of Paris and the Swedish capital, one Cartesian expert has a more sinister theory about how the French philosopher came to his end.
Read the whole article @ the Guardian.co.uk Descartes was poisoned by Catholic priest
The Purna Kumbh takes place at four places (Prayag (Allahabad), Haridwar, Ujjain, and Nashik) after every twelve years, while the Ardh Kumbh Mela is celebrated every six years at Haridwar and Prayag. Over 45 days beginning in January 2007, more than 17 million Hindu pilgrims took part in the Ardh Kumbh Mela at Prayag, and on January 15, the most auspicious day of the festival of Makar Sankranti, more than 5 million participated
Kumbh Mela is attended by millions of people on a single day. The major event of the festival is a ritual bath at the banks of the rivers in each town. Other activities include religious discussions, devotional singing, mass feeding of holy men and women and the poor, and religious assemblies where doctrines are debated and standardized.
Kumbh Mela is the most sacred of all the pilgrimages. Thousands of holy men and women (monks, saints and sadhus) attend, and the auspiciousness of the festival is in part attributable to this. The sadhus are seen clad in saffron sheets with plenty of ashes and powder dabbed on their skin per the requirements of ancient traditions. Some called naga sanyasis may often be seen without any clothes even in severe winter, generally considered to live an extreme lifestyle.
After visiting the Kumbh Mela of 1895, Mark Twain wrote:
“It is wonderful, the power of a faith like that, that can make multitudes upon multitudes of the old and weak and the young and frail enter without hesitation or complaint upon such incredible journeys and endure the resultant miseries without repining. It is done in love, or it is done in fear; I do not know which it is. No matter what the impulse is, the act born of it is beyond imagination, marvelous to our kind of people, the cold whites.”
More at Wikipedia: Kumbh Mela
Few people realise the immensity of vacancy in which the dust of the material universe swims. – H. G. Wells
From The War of the Worlds
“He had had the boudoir walls covered with bright red tapestry and all round the room he had hung ebony-framed prints by Jan Luyken , an old Dutch engraver who was almost unknown in France.
He possessed a whole series of studies by this artist in lugubrious fantasy and ferocious cruelty: his Religious Persecutions, a collection of appaling plates displaying all the tortures which religious fanaticism has invented, revealing all the agonizing varieties of human suffering – bodies roasted over braziers, heads scalped with swords, trepanned with nails, lacerated with saws, bowels taken out of the belly and wound onto bobbins, finger-nails slowly removed with pincers, eyes put out, eye lids pinned back, limbs dislocated and carefully broken, bones laid bare and scraped for hours with knives.
These pictures, full of abominable fancies, reeking of burnt flesh, echoing with screams and curses, made Des Esseintes’ flesh creep whenever he went into the red boudoir, and he remained rooted to the spot, choking with horror.
Read the rest of this entry »
Next week I going to Sharm and hopefully Dahab (Egypt) for rebreather diving on the Pelagian DCCR with TekGuru. Beside diving I will be doing no-thing except reading, sleeping and taking a swim when I get to hot. Its about -10 freezing cold in Hamburg so the change over to the +26 in sunny Egypt is going to be fun. I will unregulary update my site when I am there.
Update: 06 02 2010 – back in HH from a great trip. I did not made it to Dahab, therefore went for a desert tour – 3 hours quat biking, which was really fun to do. Further more I spend the time rebreather diving with TEKGURU and chilling on the famous Camel roof bar.
10 days to go, then I am heading Sharm for a week rebreather diving.
She walks in beauty, like the night 
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.
And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
George Gordon Byron
George Gordon Byron was born on January 22, 1788 in Aberdeen, Scotland, and inherited his family’s English title at the age of ten, becoming Baron Byron of Rochdale. Abandoned by his father at an early age and resentful of his mother, who he blamed for his being born with a deformed foot, Byron isolated himself during his youth and was deeply unhappy. Though he was the heir to an idyllic estate, the property was run down and his family had no assets with which to care for it. As a teenager, Byron discovered that he was attracted to men as well as women, which made him all the more remote and secretive. More
“But that I may reveal my heart entirely to you, my friends: IF there were gods, how could I endure it to be no God! THEREFORE there are no Gods.
“Weariness, which seeks to get to the ultimate with one leap, with a death-leap; a poor ignorant weariness, unwilling even to will any longer: that created all Gods and backworlds.
“A new pride taught me mine ego, and that teach I to men: no longer to thrust one’s head into the sand of celestial things, but to carry it freely, a terrestrial head, which gives meaning to the earth!”
Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a 19th century literary masterpiece and key philosophical work by Nietzsche. Zarathustra descends from his cave in the mountains after ten years of solitude, brimming with wisdom and love and wants to teach humanity.
The individual lessons and sermons delivered by Zarathustra cover most of the general themes of Nietzsche’s mature philosophy, though often in highly symbolic and obscure form.
Also freely-available on Thoughtaudio.com
Download [Audio + E-book - 122 MB]:
http://rapidshare.com/files/325396436/Thus.Spoke.Zarathustra.Nietzsche.Audiobook.rar
Download [E-book - 826 KB]:
http://rapidshare.com/files/325403429/Thus.Spoke.Zarathustra-Nietzsche.pdf
Behind a ribbon of evening mist, a chill sky distills,
and a melody of far waterfalls like ten silk strings
comes to my pillow to tug my feelings,
keeping me awake in sorrow past midnight.
Xue Tao was well-respected as a poet during the Tang Dynasty, when she lived. She was born either in the Tang capital Zhangan or later on when her father, a minor government official, was posted to Chengdu in present-day Sichuan province. A story about her childhood, perhaps apocryphal, suggests that she was able to write complex poems by the age of seven or eight. She may have gained some literary education from her father, but he died before she had come to marriageable age and she ended up being a very successful courtesan (one of the few paths for women in Tang Dynasty China in which conversation and artistic talent were encouraged). After Wei Gao, the military governor, became her literary patron, her reputation was widespread. She seems to have had an affair with another famous literary figure, Yuan Zhen. Late in life she went to live in seclusion and put on the habit of a Taoist churchwoman. More than one hundred of her poems survive. She is often considered (with Yu Xuanji) to be one of the two finest female poets of the Tang Dynasty.
Spring Gazing
Flowers bloom but we can’t share them.
Flowers fall and we can’t share our sadness.
If you need to find when I miss you most:
when the flowers bloom and when they fall.
I pull a blade of grass and tie a heart-shape knot
to send to the one who understands my music.
Spring sorrow is at the breaking point.
Again spring birds murmur sad songs.
Wind, flowers, and the day is aging.
No one knows when we’ll be together.
If I can’t tie my heart to my man’s,
it’s useless to keep tying heart-shaped knots.
Unbearable when flowers fill the branches,
when two people miss each other.
Tears streak my morning mirror like jade chopsticks.
Does the spring wind know that?
Amazing Vintage Images from Japan’s Forgotten Master
via Amazing Vintage Images from Japans Forgotten Master | Art & Design on WebUrbanist.
the history of American Punkrock 1980 bis 86, looks like a nice movie, that is if you where a part of this 1980′s subculture, and digg bands like Black Flag, DRI, Bad Brains.
SYNOPSIS
Generally unheralded at the time, the early 1980s hardcore punk rock scene gave birth to much of the rock music and culture that followed. There would be no Nirvana, Beastie Boys or Red Hot Chili Peppers were it not for hardcore pioneers such as Black Flag, Bad Brains and Minor Threat.
Hardcore was more than music
Well, this is the country where they produce the computer that I am writing on, my Ipod, IPhone, and all the other crap that I don’t really need. Maybe it’s time to overthink my consume patterns and stop buying things I dont need. Its a drop in the polluted ocean.
Impressive: http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china/
More here: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200911/fallows-health-china
A new cloud form called Undulatus asperatus appears.
From Wikipedia: The clouds are most closely related to undulatus clouds. Although they appear dark and storm-like, they tend to dissipate without a storm forming. The ominous-looking clouds have been particularly common in the Plains states of the United States, often during the morning or midday hours following convective thunderstorm activity. As of June, 2009 the Royal Meteorological Society is gathering evidence of the type of weather patterns in which undulus asperatus clouds appear, so as to study how they form and decide whether they are distinct from other undulatus clouds.
@wikipedia: undulus asperatus
To add a religion or supernatural enthusiasm to your life is to diminish your life. What you gain in ceremony, ritual, fellow feeling, and the comforts of a metaphoric system you lose in integrity, freedom, and dignity. Against the epic metaphor of religion is the Buddha’s better epic metaphor that all Buddhas must be killed – that religion itself is the danger. Not only are you not to believe in gods, according to the Buddha, you are not to believe in systems that distance you from a personal reckoning with the facts of existence. Personal means personal: to chant with robed monks robs you of your inheritance just as surely as praying to a bearded god does.
www.theatheistsway.com
The Atheist’s Way: Living Well Without Gods: Living Well Without Love
“A zen master’s life is one continuous mistake.”
The comming days I will attend a 3 day Zen Sesshin with Brad Warner in the Pagode Phat Hue Temple (Frankfurt). I have no idea what to expect, I will just go there and Sit down… Updates will follow later.
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| Zen Sesshin |
George Carlin (May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008) was an American stand-up comedian. He was also an actor and author, and he won five Grammy Awards for his comedy albums.
@Amazon:
When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?
Napalm and Silly Putty
Brain Droppings
@wikipedia: George Carlin
Now reading: God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by author and journalist Christopher Hitchens.
In the book, Hitchens contends that religion is "violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercivetoward children." Hitchens supports his position with a mixture of personal stories, documented historical anecdotes and critical analysis of religious texts. His commentary focuses mainly on theAbrahamic religions, although he also touches on other religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism.
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God is Not Great 1st Edition |
At Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_is_not_Great
I got a new HP Mini notebook, which is compared to the Asus netbook more professional computer. The HP Mini 2140 Notebook PC features a simple, refined all-aluminum case.It features a large 10.1-inch diagonal scratch-resistant high-definition LED display, a full-size QWERTY keyboard, and a 140 gig hard-drive.
After using the little machine for 2 days, I am really impressed. Vista runs smooth, the battery lasts more then 3 hours and the screen is great to work with. This is one of the best netbooks that I have seen so far. If it would run os X it would be perfect. If I can find the time I will start experimenting with linux (Ubuntu) on it.
HP Mini 2140 NN357EA – N270 2GB/160GB 10 or at Amazon; HP 2140 Mini-Note VBu | NN357EA
I got an Terratec Noxon iRadio for our Speicher 210 office. The iRadio streams internet radio stations, podcasts and streams our Itunes library’s. Setup was easy, and all works fine.
@Amazon: TerraTec Noxon iRadio
Now reading: Brad Warner “Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate: A Trip
Through Death, Sex, Divorce, and Spiritual Celebrity in Search of the
True Dharma”.
Zen teacher and punk bassist Brad Warner had a tough year: He lost his dream job, his mother died, his grandmother died, and his marriage fell apart. In “Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate”, Brad follows the form of his first two books, mixing his real-life adventures with Buddhist philosophy and pop culture examples. He applies the Buddha’s teachings to his own real-life suffering, deconstructing the popular image of the Buddhist Master.
How does a “real” Zen Master deal with death, divorce, job loss, and personal discord? How does he perform the work of trying to help others get over their tough times while going through some pretty heavy pain of his own? How do you sit and meditate while your world crumbles all around you? Warner also explores whether real Buddhism exists in the West, travelling around North America in search of authentic Buddhist practice. ‘While I’ve found shining examples of the Buddha’s way in prisons and at heavy metal shows‘, he writes, ‘I’ve also seen sad perversions of Buddhism in temples and among those supposedly propagating the Way in America. Authentic Buddhism doesn’t always come packaged the way we imagine it should’. This isn’t another esoteric book about the ancient, venerable, and exotic philosophy of Buddhism. It’s a book about what it means to live your life as a real human being. According to Warner, although Zen does not offer the kind of pie-in-the-sky ‘ultimate solutions’ many religions and cults promise, it does provide a real and exceptionally practical way to deal with what life dishes out to all of us. In fact, he says, Zen practice and philosophy provides the only truly rational and realistic way to live a balanced and happy life.
The bassist for the punk band Zero Defects, Brad Warner is a Zen priest, filmmaker, and Japanese monster-movie marketer living in Los Angeles. The author of Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies, & the Truth about Reality: Punk Rock Monster Movies & the Truth About Reality and Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen’s Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye, he is also is also the director and producer of Cleveland’s Screaming, a documentary about the Ohio punk scene. He teaches Zen in Santa Monica and writes a monthly column for Suicidegirls.com.
Available at Amazon Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate: A Trip Through Death, Sex, Divorce, and Spiritual Celebrity in Search of the True Dharma. You can read an excerpt here.
Now reading: Thank You and Ok!: An American Zen Failure in Japan – David Chadwick.
David Chadwick, a Texas-raised wanderer, college dropout, bumbling social activist, and hobbyhorse musician, began his study under Shunryu Suzuki Roshi in 1966. In 1988 Chadwick flew to Japan to begin a four-year period of voluntary exile and remedial Zen education. In Thank You and OK! he recounts his experiences both inside and beyond the monastery walls and offers insightful portraits of the characters he knew in that world—the bickering monks, the patient abbot, the trotting housewives, the ominous insects, the bewildered bureaucrats, and the frustrating English-language students—as they worked inexorably toward initiating him into the mysterious ways of Japan. Whether you’re interested in Japan, Buddhism, or exotic travel writing, this book is great fun.
To learn more about the author, David Chadwick, visit More about David Chadwick
Since German is not an easy language for an Ausländer, I do seldom read German books. But wen I found the new book from Blixa Bargeld on Amazon I had to get and and read it. There is not much I can say about it: it is great and with only 150 pages way, way to short. I really did enjoy the calm narrating style, this, the no rock star bullshit and all the little details makes this book great to read.
Europa kreuzweise: Eine Litanei- Blixa Bargeld
ICH SOLL EINEN TEXT VERFASSEN, ein Buch schreiben, eine Litanei anstimmen. Ich bin nicht katholisch und mir fehlt die passende Erinnerung. Meine Freundin Maria, aus Bayern (katholisch und Literaturwissenschaftlerin), die ich bei solchen Gelegenheiten anrufe, schreibt mir aus Berlin: Was mir an dieser Textsorte am interessantesten erscheint, ist die dialogische Form und vor allem die Möglichkeit, Passagen zu wiederholen bzw. wieder aufzunehmen, der Text also potentiell unendlich ist ganz wichtig ist auch, dass die Litanei ein Text zum HÖREN ist Das müsste sich ja mit mir treffen. In ein paar Tagen werde ich in Europa sein. Ich werde wieder 2Monate überwiegend in einem Bus verbringen. Von Lissabon bis Moskau, Oslo bis Neapel, Europa kreuz und quer. Vielleicht sollte ich Maria auch noch fragen, was ein Exposé ist. Was es genau ist. Ich glaube, ich weiß, worauf es hinausläuft: Pressetext, Waschzettel, Kurzbeschreibung. Also bitte: Auf der Reise durch Europa hat der Sänger, Komponist, was weiß ich was, einen zirkulären Text verfasst, einen Monolog, eine Litanei, eine Idiotennovelle, einen Bildungsroman in der erstbesten Person, eine Gardinenpredigt. Europa kreuzweise. Plus 12 Kochrezepte. Blixa Bargeld
Stimme frißt Feuer – Blixa Bargeld . Nice little booklet with mostly texts, drawings and poems from the beginning of Einstürzende Neubauten. This book brings memories back from all the concerts we went to, squatted houses, days without sleep and all the good conversations we had. A must have for anybody who was around.
Kollaps / bis zum Kollaps
nicht viel Zeit
Kollaps / bis zum Kollaps
nicht viel Zeit
Kollaps / Unsre Irrfahrten
zerstören die Städte
und nächtliches Wandern
macht sie dem Erdboden gleich
Kollaps / alles was ich kriegen kann
Alles in mich rein
Kollaps / süßer Kollaps
bitter und bitter und bitter
bis zum Kollaps
Horden / die neue Goldene Horde
diesmal ohne Dschingis Khan
wir zerstören die Städte
nächtliches Wandern macht uns blind
Kollaps / sei mein Kollaps
Kollaps / nicht viel Zeit / nicht viel Zeit
schlag schneller schrei lauter
leb schneller / bis zum Kollaps nicht viel Zeit
wir sind die neuen Goldenen Horden
diesmal ohne Dschingis Khan
bis zum Kollaps nicht viel Zeit
verbrenn mich reiß mich nieder
bitter / bitter / bitter / bitter
Europa kreuzweise: Eine Litanei- Blixa Bargeld
Stimme frißt Feuer
“Silence is a source of great strength.
– Lao Tzu
died last Friday at age 77. JanWillem vd Wetering is one of my favorite Dutch writers, specially his Zen related books are a great read.
Pissing in the gene pole – Henry Rollins
Art to Choke Hearts – Henry Rollins
Feuchtgebiete – Charlotte Roche
Verhalen – Jef Geeraerts
The Dharma of Star Wars – Matthew Bortolin:
“If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan’s apprentice.”
The Dharma of Star Wars brings together the phenomenon of Star Wars with humanity’s profound hunger for the spiritual. Parade magazine recently declared “Jedi Knight” to be the “Best New Religion” and the UK Times reported, “It is George Lucas, rather than St. Luke, who taught today’s twentysomethings much of what they first learnt about right and wrong.” (And perhaps more famously: in a UK census, some 390,000 British citizens declared “Jedi” to be their official religion. Similarly, a census report in in Australia tallied 70,000 as followers of the Star Wars “faith.”) For many, Star Wars was their first taste of religious thought without the dogma and restrictions of organized religion. It awoke in them a certain spirituality that Buddhism, with its emphasis on personal inquiry and self-realization, so fluidly speaks to. The Dharma of Star Wars uses Buddhism and George Lucas’ powerful mythos to illuminate each other in a way that speaks directly to the heart.
More @ google books
@ Amazon
cool: today arrived my TDI Kiss diver certificate.
- Simon Reynolds.
“Rip It Up and Start Again” is the first book-length exploration of the wildly adventurous music created in the years after punk. Renowned music journalist Simon Reynolds celebrates the futurist spirit of such bands as Joy Division, Gang of Four, Talking Heads, and Devo, which resulted in endless innovations in music, lyrics, performance, and style and continued into the early eighties with the video-savvy synth- pop of groups such as Human League, Depeche Mode, and Soft Cell, whose success coincided with the rise of MTV. Full of insight and anecdote and populated by charismatic characters, “Rip It Up” re-creates the idealism, urgency, and excitement of one of the most important and challenging periods in the history of popular music. Well thats says it all.
In between my biz traveling I found some time to go to see Henry Rollins in the Hamburg culture Temple “The Schauspielhaus”. Usually I would only go to a hypocrite building like that to bomb or burn it, but since this was the only chance to see Rollins I had to jump over my shadow and mingle with the intellectual Hamburger crowed. And it was well worth it; we got a 3 hour shower of Henrys latest adventures, travel stories, rock and roll stories and politic views. He was on stage for about 3 hours, hardly moving except for his mouth which was like a machine gun firing words into the audience. It was a lot, and it was worth it. He is just a great person with a good sense of humor, smart and driven. No nonsense, no rock artist bullshit, no ego tripping; Just do it !
Henry Rollins news page: http://members.cox.net/_rollins/
More on my site about Henry Rollins
At Amazon: Turned on: Biography of Henry Rollins
- Colin Wilson This work presents the life and work of one of the most influential psychological theorists of modern times. George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff is one of the most enigmatic figures of our time. He attracted legends as easily as disciples. But behind the Gurdjieff myth lies a solid corpus of thought, the importance of which is only now being generally recognized. At its heart was the idea of ‘the war against sleep’, the fact that man, in Colin Wilson’s words, is like ‘a grandfather clock driven by a watch-spring’. This brilliant and much praised examination of a psychologist and teacher of genius has established itself as the most important and accessible account for the general reader of Gurdjieff’s life and work.
At Amazon: G. I. Gurdjieff: The War Against Sleep
- by Rafael Lefort.
Book Description
When The Teachers of Gurdjieff was first published some 25 years ago, it made a very considerable stir. George Gurdjieff was one of the most famous mystics before the war, a teaching master who had many fashionable and influential pupils. He had a striking appearance and manner of teaching, one that was to prove influential. The meaning of his teaching and the sources of it were a puzzle. How did he come by his knowledge? What was to become of it? These were questions that engaged many seekers.
Yet, with the rapidly changing focus of our era in all things, not least spiritual, this is in some real part a book of another time. From the time of Gurdjieff’s operations to the early ’70s, many in the West were discovering, for the first time, the older religious and spiritual traditions of the East. After his death, Gurdjieff’s followers were running groups in “the fourth way”; travelers set out to India, Tibet, Japan, Turkey and other parts east to find their Buddhists, Tibetan Buddhists, Sonoran Shamen, and the rest. Schools began, seekers sought and found, sought again, found again.
Today, everything is available and exposed on the table, and anybody can connect with any technique at any time. And the possibilities are endless, highly intellectual, highly emotional, highly sensual. How many different forms of yoga, zen philosophy are there, and is a lifetime enough to find a proper combination, or is the answer closer at home.
This book offers, among the adventures of the search and the souks of Baghdad and Aleppo, striking and timeless advice to those interested in finding spirituality. Its appeal is far beyond that of one seeker in one era, but offers us information, today, on how to evaluate different forms of teaching, how to study, and even some tantalizing information on the role of Jesus.
Excerpted:
You are scrabbling about in the sand, attracted by pieces of mica to knit together and make a window, not realising that the sand itself is capable of being transformed into the purest glass.–
From The Teachers of Gurdjieff
At Amazon: The Teachers of Gurdjief
Iggy Pop: I’ll tell you about punk rock: punk rock is a word used by dilettantes and, uh… and, uh… heartless manipulators, about music… that takes up the energies, and the bodies, and the hearts and the souls and the time and the minds, of young men, who give what they have to it, and give everything they have to it. And it’s a… it’s a term that’s based on contempt; it’s a term that’s based on fashion, style, elitism, satanism, and, everything that’s rotten about rock ‘n’ roll. I don’t know Johnny Rotten.. but I’m sure, I’m sure he puts as much blood and sweat into what he does as Sigmund Freud did. You see, what, what sounds to you like a big load of trashy old noise… is in fact… the brilliant music of a genius… myself. And that music is so powerful, that it’s quite beyond my control. And, ah… when I’m in the grips of it, I don’t feel pleasure and I don’t feel pain, either physically or emotionally. Do you understand what I’m talking about? Have you ever, have you ever felt like that? When you just, when you just, you couldn’t feel anything, and you didn’t want to either. You know, like that? Do you understand what I’m saying, sir?
A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries – by Noah Levine
Foucault’s Pendulum and The Name of the Rose – by Umberto Eco.
Back from my diving trip. I had a great week in Hurghada and did some verry nice tek dives, with Tekstreme, the Technical diving department from Emperor divers. I am already planning my next trip for the end of this year 1 week Sharm El Sheikh with the same company.
Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen’s Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye by Brad Warner (author of Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies, & the Truth about Reality)
From Publishers Weekly
Warner, a Zen priest, author (Hardcore Zen) and former punk rock bassist, has a very distinctive voice. It may be off-putting to some to think about Buddha and a bunch of Zen masters, including esteemed 13th-century Japanese Zen master Dogen, as dudes riffing on “whiz-bang-with-cheese-on-top-enlightenment.” But for the patient, curious and those for whom Warner’s slash-the-crap style is their cup of green tea, this Zen punk book offers provocation and reward. Warner ambitiously presents something close to textual commentary on a key text by Dogen while teaching on anger, sex, loving-kindness, dependent arising and other familiar Buddhist themes. The topical chapters are tied together by Warner’s narration of a punk band reunion. The author’s knowledge of Japanese from his years of living in Japan adds to his credibility, since it allows him to better explore the nuances of Japanese Zen. Though he might be disappointed to hear it, Warner is probably less provocative than some of the first-generation Asian teachers who transplanted Zen to America. Still, Buddhism has long enjoyed baffling “crazy-wisdom” teachers and paradoxical koans, and Warner’s punk iconoclasm fits in nicely. (May)
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Book Description
In Sit Down and Shut Up, Brad Warner tackles one of the great works of Zen literature, the Shobogenzo by 13th-century Zen master Dogen. Illuminating Dogen’s enigmatic teachings in plain language, Warner intertwines sharp philosophical musings on sex, evil, anger, meditation, enlightenment, death, God, sin, and happiness with an exploration of the power and pain of the punk rock ethos. Riffing on his triumphant return to Ohio for a reunion concert of Akron punk bands, Brad uncovers the real heart of Zen, in teachings and stories with a sharp smack of truth,.