Reset

I believe so.

Can you promise me that there can be more than this?
This stuff is wretched. Putrid. It can not be what life is made of...but it so obviously is.

I'm not saying life is full of misery, at least not in the way a bag might be full of sand. But I do believe there is an inevitable quality to suffering. You can say that this is the nature of life, of existence. You can say that it's not the pain that defines us but what we do in the face of it. And I might be inclined to agree. But this doesn't change the fact that this life....this misery...is inescapable. And why?

Why MUST we be defined through suffering?

And I can admit that so much good can come of the whole exercise. I can admit that joy lives on the other side of despair's coin. I might even be convinced that the two are not so mutually exclusive as to exist at the expense of the other. That conceit would do more to underscore my point, however.

There are various solutions. They've been posited by various religions and spiritual traditions. Many are vastly different. More are very similar...at least at their core. I'm sure there is an answer amongst one or all of them. I'm sure the answer for each person exists in a different way.
And I'm sure the different answers are all the same.

But it still makes me angry.

It still makes me resentful.

I don't know what sin was committed in the universe that existed before this one to justify this cycle of suffering definitude.
I know it must have been big...and bad.

I know I'm sorry it happened...whether I share I share in that responsibility or not.

But I'm tired.
I'm tired of the walls.
I'm tired of the bars.
I'm tired of fighting with inmates and I'm tired of hating the warden.

I don't want to leave. I'd have no place to go.

I just want to be...

who I was...

before all this.

WHY THE MATRIX MIGHT NOT HAVE SUCKED.

My new appreciation for the Matrix began when i started researching a paper i wrote on paradoxes in buddhist wisdom.

The most commonly discussed paradox is that of causality. To what extent do beings exercise a "free-will" in a world where all action and circumstance are predicated on karmic consequence and conditioning.

Karma-theory in Buddhism is not a simple "what goes around comes around" doctine (ie: the war-monger lives his next life in a land beset by destruction). Karma theory also describes the mental and behavioural conditioning of a being as a function of past thoughts and actions. Engaging in a given thought or action conditions the "mind" to think or act in a similar manner in the future. Therefore, at any moment in time, not only are the phenomenal circumstances of your existence (location, family born into, external happenings unto you) predicates of an inaccessible past, but so too are your THOUGHTS or predispositions regarding those phenomenal circumstances, predicates of an inaccessible past..

So the question is, how does one exercise a free-will choice to be evaluated for future karmic consequence?

The short answer is that deep analysis of buddhist karma theory reveals 3 types of interrelated karmic effects that, though highly coercive, fall just short of being STRICTLY deterministic. There is a "space" left between the sum of all karmic influences on a given moment and the action taken in that moment. The action taken in that "free-space" is the "free-will choice." It is this action that is qualitatively assessed for future karmic consideration. And to the extent that the action serves as a "break" from the previous directional flow of karma, one can be said to be exercising "free-will." Put another way, the highly intricate nature of definition in the universe and the highly interconnectedness of the various karmic influences come very close to predicting all of human action but ultimately does not. and Buddhism doesn't claim that it does.

Buddhist wisdom accepts the failure of the inordinately complex equation to account for all human action. THERE IS A REMAINDER! The free will choice is the factoring back in of that remainder. When the free will choice remains in congruence with previous karmic conditioning then it contributes, in its role as a "remainder-factor", BACK into the complex equation, the cycle of human existence. When the free will choice is a break from karmic conditioning, it becomes an integral factor of a different equation, of a different cycle, nirvanic existence or a world WITHOUT suffering.

This fundamental understanding of buddhism is one of the Wachowskis main sources of influence for the Matrix trilogy. It's what the conversation with the architect was all about. Neo's "choice" before the architect would either 1. perpetuate the existence of the "the matrix", maintain a marginal existence for those outside of the matrix and more generally, perpetuate the war between man and machines OR 2. it would destroy "the matrix", ostensibly elevate the power of those OUTSIDE the matrix and bring the global war betwenn man and machine to some end.

Now the Architect, in order to exert some control over a choice that by definition was out of his control sought to frame the choice within a context that left Neo with "no-choice." His predecessors chose predictably and the cycle continued.

For the buddhist, all beings are faced with Neo's decision every moment of their lives. Someone walks up and punches you. Karma theory allows that 1. this is your just desserts for some previous act 2. your predisposition to hit back is natural but also that 3. the decision NOT TO ATTACK, though incredibly hard to do, breaks the cycle and contributes to the cycle of nirvana.

This also partly explains what some have described as the anticlimactic ending. The final solution to the war was not to be had though your normal Manichaean fight between good and evil; man vs machine, Neo vs Smith. The solution was only to be found through community and letting go.

The men had to LET Neo go away with a warship, compromising their defenses. The Machines had to LET Neo enter their world and fight on their behalf. And in the end Neo had to LET Smith take him to create that union. The solution to the entire struggle was acceptance and communion...or you could say LOVE. Because remember, the world of MAN wasn't the only world that contained love. The programs loved too! ie: little Sati in the LIMBO Ave, Persephone with the Merovingian, etc...

There's so much more of this movie to debate and discuss ie: the alienation of mind, body and spirit, the corruption of spirit, the nature of freedom and enslavement. But this is my take on Buddhism and on the Matrix trilogy. I encourage you all to watch it again in its entireity while keeping some of the concepts I've mentioned in mind.

I really believe this movie was genius.

Smash

FOR THOSE OF YOU...

...who have missed my semi-lyrical musings over the past week and half, fret not.

I am currently undertaking some physiological and psychological restructuring.

I shall return to the land of the living by next week.



Please report back here on Tuesday, April 8th when I will commence the bi-weekly posting that I'm SURE you can all hardly do without.



Cheers!



Smash

GETHSEMANE

Fallen,
I lay here,
cursed,
as stone;
a dream reversed,
ruin of my own fault.

I imagined too hard.

Your fingered brush,
so light and so spark,
so ever and so lush,
turned callous
before me,
leaving me
pressed and emptied.

I was as brittle bone,
de-fleshed.

And our life grew
too soon for you,
or too much,
perhaps; certainly
more than I
could ever unmake.

I dreamed too hard.

And what is there to do
with wounds of this sort,
of this brand,
of this other kind,
but to treat them
with tears and with love-
____________reversed?

Our paths through this garden
of agony and eden,
once parallel, now lie
crossed,

and it is here I stay,
vexed,
hard and salted;
a stone.

By Raphael Armand

The Red Phone in Black and White

By ORLANDO PATTERSON

Published: March 11, 2008; NY Times: Op-Ed

ON first watching Hillary Clinton’s recent "It's 3 a.m." advertisement, I was left with an uneasy feeling that something was not quite right — something that went beyond my disappointment that she had decided to go negative. Repeated watching of the ad on YouTube increased my unease. I realized that I had only too often in my study of America’s racial history seen images much like these, and the sentiments to which they allude.

I am not referring to the fact that the ad is unoriginal; as several others have noted, it mimics a similar ad made for Walter Mondale in his 1984 campaign for the Democratic nomination. What bothers me is the difference between this and the Mondale ad. The Mondale ad directly and unequivocally played on the issue of experience. The danger was that the red telephone might be answered by someone who was “unsure, unsteady, untested.” Why do I believe this? Because the phone and Mr. Mondale are the only images in the ad. Fair game in the normal politics of fear.

Not so this Clinton ad. To be sure, it states that something is “happening in the world” — although it never says what this is — and that Mrs. Clinton is better able to handle such danger because of her experience with foreign leaders. But every ad-maker, like every social linguist, knows that words are often the least important aspect of a message and are easily muted by powerful images.

I have spent my life studying the pictures and symbols of racism and slavery, and when I saw the Clinton ad’s central image — innocent sleeping children and a mother in the middle of the night at risk of mortal danger — it brought to my mind scenes from the past. I couldn’t help but think of D. W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,” the racist movie epic that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan, with its portrayal of black men lurking in the bushes around white society. The danger implicit in the phone ad — as I see it — is that the person answering the phone might be a black man, someone who could not be trusted to protect us from this threat.

The ad could easily have removed its racist sub-message by including images of a black child, mother or father — or by stating that the danger was external terrorism. Instead, the child on whom the camera first focuses is blond. Two other sleeping children, presumably in another bed, are not blond, but they are dimly lighted, leaving them ambiguous. Still it is obvious that they are not black — both, in fact, seem vaguely Latino.

Finally, Hillary Clinton appears, wearing a business suit at 3 a.m., answering the phone. The message: our loved ones are in grave danger and only Mrs. Clinton can save them. An Obama presidency would be dangerous — and not just because of his lack of experience. In my reading, the ad, in the insidious language of symbolism, says that Mr. Obama is himself the danger, the outsider within.

Did the message get through? Well, consider this: people who voted early went overwhelmingly for Mr. Obama; those who made up their minds during the three days after the ad was broadcast voted heavily for Mrs. Clinton.

For more than a century, American politicians have played on racial fears to divide the electorate and mobilize xenophobic parties. Blacks have been the “domestic enemy,” the eternal outsider within, who could always inspire unity among “we whites.” Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy was built on this premise, using coded language — “law and order,” “silent majority” — to destroy the alliance between blacks and white labor that had been the foundation of the Democratic Party, and to bring about the Republican ascendancy of the past several decades. The Willie Horton ad that George H. W. Bush used against Michael Dukakis in 1988 was a crude manifestation of this strategy — as was the racist attack used against John McCain’s daughter, who was adopted from Bangladesh, in the South Carolina Republican primary in 2000.

It is significant that the Clinton campaign used its telephone ad in Texas, where a Fox poll conducted Feb. 26 to 28 showed that whites favored Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton 47 percent to 44 percent, and not in Ohio, where she held a comfortable 16-point lead among whites. Exit polls on March 4 showed the ad’s effect in Texas: a 12-point swing to 56 percent of white votes toward Mrs. Clinton. It is striking, too, that during the same weekend the ad was broadcast, Mrs. Clinton refused to state unambiguously that Mr. Obama is a Christian and has never been a Muslim.

It is possible that what I saw in the ad is different from what Mrs. Clinton and her operatives saw and intended. But as I watched it again and again I could not help but think of the sorry pass to which we may have come — that someone could be trading on the darkened memories of a twisted past that Mr. Obama has struggled to transcend.

Orlando Patterson is a professor of sociology at Harvard and the author of “The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America’s ‘Racial’ Crisis.”

Play-Dates

Greg: Hey uh...Al...mind if I ask you a question?

Allan: Go for it.

Greg: Are you playing with yourself right now?

Allan: (movement beneath blanket) Heh! Yeah! I guess I am.

Greg: That's what I thought. Isn't that my shirt your wearing?

Allan: Yeah, man. It was with my shit last time I did laundry. Been meaning to give it back to you, actually.

Greg: Right.

Allan: (still moving) Then I ran short on clean clothes this week so I started wearing it.

Greg: Why not?

Allan: I'll clean it with my next batch and give-

Greg: I'm sure

Allan: ...it back. No, really. I just put it on half without thinking.

Greg: Please tell me you don't plan on finishing right here in front of me.

Allan: Naaah, I'm not getting anywhere with this. (takes hands out from beneath blanket)
I'm barely even erect.

Greg: Oh that's a shame...

Allan: Yeah it is.

Greg: ...hope it wasn't anything I said. (crosses to opposite couch and sits) What's up with you and Sandy?

Allan: (shaking head slowly) Man. I dunno, dude. I haven't really spoken to her in a while.

Greg: Put her on punishment?

Allan: Not even. I just haven't been in the mood for her.

Greg: Wow.

Allan: She texted me yesterday morning asking to meet for lunch.

Greg: Oh yeah?

Allan: Yeah. I never replied, though.

Greg: "Treat 'em and beat 'em!" (reaching over to grab remote) So I take it she won't be stopping by tonight.

Allan: She might actually. When we last spoke she said she wanted to go out this weekend. I'm not sure if-(cell phone rings) -that's probably her now.

Free-Will Fuel

Theodore: You haven't gotten much rest
in the last few days, have you?

Ivan: I'm no good at all. I'm selfish and self-satisfied.
How am I unfortunate? She was... they were but still...
they died without complaint. Look at them. (sobbing)
I'm so blessed it's embarassing. (more sobbing)
I'm no good. I was vain and proud of being.
I was 'too good. I even held you in contempt; despised you. I'm a despicable man...(sobbing) conceited (more sobbing) ...and insincere.

Theodore: You're tired. You need to get some sleep.