Leaderboard

People commonly have opinions on all sorts of things they have no business being certain about. Is it better for some random person on the street to be a vegetarian or eat meat? What´s really happening in a country I´ve never been to half way around the world? Should so-and-so still live with their parents, smoke less pot, have more or less sex? I know so much less than I think I do, a fact that I find counterintuitively reassuring. Contemplating my uncertainty brings me closer to "the light."

"As much as I love the idea, an Akashic records vault full of stories about he past and future violates everything that insight into emptiness/dao/Buddha nature clearly demonstrates about reality in this moment. Speaking solely for myself, I would only believe it if I saw it but it would have to violate everything I know about the ultimate qualities of reality, AND it would have to be something that was always available in this moment." ---- VVV Ok, but you realize that you're saying a persons experience is invalid because it doesn't conform to what you believe... that itself doesn't make sense. Thats the whole point of experience trumping belief. What are you referring to as in "insight into emptiness/dao/buddha nature clearly demonstrates"? What ultimate qualities of reality do you know?

not really Apech, I'd say you are a pretty cool cat ;-) (figuratively speaking)

Don't worry ... Gomer had his moderator as well ;

Ooo oooo! I wanna play . Its temporal ( as I scroll down .) Someone has a slot drain in their shower Like I do , but for some reason its got a metal grill and the drain is blocked and water is flowing backwards out of it onto that horrible bathroom carpet .... What idiot carpets the inside of their shower ! Half way down bubbles appear in the streams of water that look like silver now and ........ < squint > Hey ! They ain't bubbles .... them those little marks that tell you it IS silver . I cant make out a ' K' or a 'crossed out O ' ... so they just a bunch of forks . . . lying on a fine toweling 80s era Flashdance wide sweat/hair band .

Perhaps some gnostics could help

Well, we could go into physics or neuroscience or religion/philosophy from here, but I prefer to define "distortions" on species-specific terms. Whales have dichromatic vision, only discerning shades of yellow and blue -- but it doesn't mean their eyesight is more distorted than ours, or less. It's adequate for the species. If perceptions work long term (in terms of evolutionary spans of time -- tens of millions of years or longer) toward a species surviving and (importantly) thriving, I say its perceptions are not distorted, they are selected and are doing their job adequately. No one can perceive "everything" if we want life on Earth. Similarly, no one can perceive "nothing" and be alive. So selected perceptions is the normal state of affairs that is a prerequisite for both biodiversity and survival of particular species. We are experimental, we haven't been around long enough to draw conclusions -- but I've a hunch we don't operate a set of selected human perceptions that are accurate and life-supporting anymore. If we ever get ourselves out of this perceptive mess, we may still straighten out our plight... time will tell. But what it "tells" right now is not very encouraging IMO. To paraphrase a well-known maxim, you can fool all your perceptions some of the time, and you can fool some of your perceptions all of the time, but you can't fool all your perceptions all of the time.

yes i agree. ALL perception is distorted. ALL of it.

Things aren't what they seem. Our perceptions have little to do with reality and are instead the outcome of filtering the input through multiple pre-installed prisms that can (and do) do a number on the incoming light. What is worse, the incoming light -- or what we perceive as light, as truth, as reality -- is, in the case of any incomplete, lacking personal participation, indirect, manipulated, or outright fake picture presented to us is pre-filtered for us through someone else's carefully installed prisms. Ulteriorly distorted, mind you. The range of distortion may vary, from slight to total. Yet perceiving a totally distorted picture can be every bit as convincing to the observer as looking at an absolutely accurate one. More so, because distortions tax the brain, it's scientific fact (established in experiments with very young children, too young to have learned to lie) that lies require of our brain the kind of equilibristics and contortions that the rest of what we are can't possibly accept, and that's the beginning of the split, of the fragmentation of consciousness. The outcome may vary -- from mild stupidity to profound mental disorders. (Caption: "The brain doesn't immediately understand what's going on in this picture." )

Yes ... a poisonous snake rather than a venomous one .

^ 'ascent portal'

If the water quality is questionable, it’s boiled to kill bacteria, virus and parasites.

I got banned on reddit but it’s useless for cultivation anyways. This site is the best publicly available place to learn

There are many ways to deal with anger, but the general one I'm more familiar with is to strip it of its story and feel it fully. Usually what keep anger going is engaging with it-- I can't believe he said that, who does she think she is, etc. Instead of doing that, one may just feel it as it is, without trying to modify or change it. This allows it to fully express and dissolve, i.e. to be digested into the consuming fire of awareness.