surrogate corpse

(projecting my values onto a silent world in sheer wild-eyed terror) u gotta Face the Facts

The third movie is the closest to "alright" of the bunch. Allegedly the director didn't read the book.

bad person, worse author

well now i need a crown of femurs made from my vanquished enemies...

how about this: next time i'm at one of the local used bookstores i'll check for a byron, just for you

I don't have one! (This contributes to my having no opinion)

I don't have any opinions on Lord Byron!

ok here are just the shelves that were obscured in the photo i posted this morning

on second thought, having "the flowers of evil" visible on my shelf probably isn't helping my "not actually malevolent" case...

@Apech better?

look to be clear it does still tell you something about the kind of person i am

« though the cook does not order the kitchen, the surrogate corpse does not leap goblet and tray to replace him » zhuangzi ch. 1

unfortunately something that is a little too identifying to want to say

my job doesn't pay me enough for me to afford a malevolent hearse 😭

i'm waiting for the bus right now in fact 👁️

@Apech this is the serious answer. liminal_luke's post just before it is good too

Or a Zhuangzi character. "Master Startled Submissive spoke to Master Long Girlcock, saying..."

i spared this thread a lot of detail about that, i can't be that malevolent (on the other hand, in typing this post, i initially had "threat" as a typo for "thread", so who knows...)

precisely, @liminal_luke! i do nothing special; folks around me fall to pieces. how strange! they tell me i'm malevolent. perhaps i am malevolent, perhaps i am the threat they say i am. perhaps one day soon i shall cease to be malevolent. i do not expect it will be because of any change in me. (though i do expect there will be many changes in me; i am a changing essence, after all) ultimately, i don't know anything about that. i simply am as i must be, and i do good as best as i can perceive it.

I suppose it depends what exactly you are looking for. There is plenty of low-level discussion of various abstinences and purifications that go along with and are preconditions for mental cultivation. (My reading has been haphazard so I don't know sutta names offhand, sorry.) If you're looking for more intense methods—which I take it you are—you won't find it. (Indeed, the suttas tend to be skeptical of what can be achieved with just bodily cultivation.)

@Apech torn between giving a serious answer to that (what is our status in society? from whose perspective are we deemed "malevolent"?) and gently chiding that i'm just trying to compliment a gal for looking good in a photo and it really shouldn't be taken too seriously, and as a compromise you get this halfway house of a post @Maddie 👁️

it means just what it says really, there's an innocence to it that's a bit sinister, like you're luring someone in only to steal their soul once they get close (cannot stress enough that this is a good thing. being vaguely malevolent spirits is our birthright)

Rinzai Zen is generally known for being more "in the body" than other Zen schools. Also, Linji (= Rinzai)'s book is extremely fun. But also, if you just read early Buddhist suttas there is plenty of talk about body cultivation alongside the mental.

"The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new." (S. Beckett)

you look like a soul-stealing spirit in this (positive affect)