All becoming and unbecoming are simultaneous.
Life and death are happening at the same time.
Gain and loss are also simultaneous.
When something is gained, its opposite is lost to that same extent.
When something arises, something else passes.
We see things and events in time because of the dullness of our awareness.
Only when the gains/losses cross a certain threshold do we even notice them as such and experience them like they suddenly happened at a particular time.
Time is like a dreamed up story.
Things are forever brewing slowly.
There are no nouns/things, rather there are only verbs/processes.
Everything is a continuous process unfolding.
Imagination vs Reality
Imagination is on your terms.
Reality is on its terms.
Good as long-term, Bad as short-term
When it comes to good/bad, right/wrong, noble/evil,
I think it is more often a ‘short-term vs long-term’ idea.
Good is often seen as a long-standing solution,
While bad is often seen from taking the much shorter easier routes,
Where the gains may rapidly or abruptly reverse themselves over time.
In a way, time will reverse everything no matter if good or bad.
So the notions of good and bad are in a relative sense.
Relatively longer lasting is seen as better and good.
‘Reason’ as a crutch used for acceptance
I feel like ‘Reason’ is often used as a crutch for acceptance.
Is it possible to accept directly without it?
Without having a reason? Without making a reason?
I sometimes feel like the need to know/understand/reason is also a crutch.
We use all of that to make the acceptance more bearable.
The knowledge from drugs
The ‘knowledge’ obtained from drugs does not come from the drugs, but comes from you.
Drugs are similar to books in that way.
The book is not the knowledge,
It is food for your mind, only if you are capable of digesting-absorbing-assimilating it.
Happiness is an elusive paradox
Happiness is like sleep.
I cannot study it,
Because when I am in it,
I am not there.
What is the real saviour?
It is not ignorance that saves you,
Nor is it knowledge that saves you.
Rather, it is ‘knowledge of ignorance’ that is the real saviour.
Free will feels like the mirage illusion
Free will feels like the mirage illusion in my experience.
If I don’t pay close attention to it or without close examination,
It feels like it is always there.
But once I really concentrate on it and pay very close attention,
I find that it vanishes.
Then once again, once my mind moves over to other things,
The free will component seems to reappear.
It reminds me of the illusion of solidity we experience.
When looking deeper and deeper into the atom,
We find 99.99% empty space.
But yet on returning to daily life,
We once again experience solidity everywhere.
The 2 variables of environment and control
There are 2 variables: Environment, Control
This could apply to the external (outer-circumstances) or internal (identity) domain.
From the most pleasant to the most unpleasant, I can think of 4 levels:
1. You could have an environment so good, that is not only already pleasant, but more and more pleasantness keeps outpouring/blossoming from it. No control is even needed in this case. Blessings are simply overflowing without any intervention.
2. You could have an environment that is stable and neutral, such that, you can use your effort to get more and more pleasure. This would be the realm of hobbies, passions, explorations, romances, achievements, endeavours, adventures etc.
3. You could have a hostile environment, that is quite unstable, such that it imprisons and enslaves you even to just maintain stability. Here there is constant struggle, using control just to keep things ok.
4. You could have an environment so hostile, and so unstable, that everything around you devolves and worsens, and even the exertion of all your control only slows and makes somewhat bearable this unstoppable fall.
I could call the first 2 levels as heavens and the last 2 levels as hells.
The 1st world, 2nd world ——vs—— The 3rd world, 4th world
The blind men and the elephant analogy describes our experience with time
Time = Kala/Darkness/Blankness.
When it comes to time, we live like blind men.
Unable to see beyond the present moment,
Living moment to moment.
Someone whose time is good says life is good,
Someone whose time is bad says life is bad.
Who is right?
Someone who is dying says life is destruction.
Someone who is at a thriving stage says life is constructive.
Who has the correct view of what life is?
This reminds me of the analogy of the blind men and the elephant.
Depending on what they feel,
They create a model of what life is based on that.
We live moment to moment, unable to sense time itself.
With our eyes open we can perceive reasonably large amounts of space.
But when it comes to time, we have no such sense.
The longer we live, the more we use our memory to model what life is like.
But we only base our idea by retrospect.
If time changes in a way that is different from our immediate past,
We cannot know.
Journey to the Abstract 