Best Interests

All hail this capitalist perversion.

Where everything has its price.

Consume it all and don’t think twice.

It’s all part of the diversion.

So frail, this democratic delusion.

Where people vote to have a voice,

Believing that they have a choice.

But it’s all just an illusion.

For sale, is a nation in division.

Where politicians tell their lies,

With hopes that you won’t realize

That it’s never your decision.

It won’t be safe to drink the rain,

Or use the plants from fruited plains.

They’ll own the water and the food

And soon enough,

They’ll own you to.

2-29-2016

 

Thank You Buddha

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
Buddha
Kalama Sutta.Buddha, Buddhism, Logic

Fractions of a dollar

Wake up at 4am. 10hrs later I’m on my way home…if I’m lucky.  Hours blend into days, which blend into months, to years. Every week is a slap in the face. These fractions of a dollar barely adding up to enough to live. Yes it may be worse in other parts of the world, but I’m here, not there. Is it unfortunate that I lack the pseudo optimism that drives the worker ants to serve their queen? Reluctantly I become one of the hive. Just another drone. Working to make the boss rich with my life, the value of my time. Spare a few drops of nectar? Not by choice but by necessaty. Lines of cars on the highway, lines of robots through the door, lines of ants down the ant hill. Did someone call an exterminator?

Parallel Paths Align

“We all follow a path in life, leading us to somewhere we are supposed to be. As we walk our path we see the world. Hope that our paths never cross, because if they do we will never meet as we should. For we will be walking in different directions. Our brief memory of each other fading like footsteps in the sand. Instead, hope for our paths to align along the parallel so that we may walk together, hand in hand, on this journey through uncertainty.”

4-3-2011

Around We Go.

“We can never think outside the box if we allow ourselves to only think in circles.”

To what end?

I’m sitting here in a hospital waiting for my child to join us in external existence and I feel intensely conflicted. This happened as a result of watching a documentary about one of the greatest beings of all time, Buddha. The pure intelligence and understanding of what we are and what we are supposed to be. Then I started reading about the chaos we are living through. Soldiers baiting children by throwing candy and then shooting them with sub-machine guns as they ran to pick it up. Islamic fundamentalists believing it is their job to usher in the end times. Christians burning Mosques, Muslims burning churches. The worlds self-proclaimed “religions of peace and love” destroying each other and taking innocent life along with them. Meanwhile I sit and observe all this ignorance, the lonely Atheist, agonizing over the fact that I can realize what is happening, I can see the cycle, I can learn from our history of mistakes, yet I can’t seem to do anything about it. There are people out there who know what needs to be done, that feel this collective suffering, but where are they?
The legend says that at his birth Buddha told his mother he was here to end suffering. For over 2,500 years Buddhists have been ignored because they don’t have bombs and guns. They have unlocked the mind and what it is to be human, the connection and rights of all sentient beings. Focusing on reality while the purity of the world is murdered by the followers of blind, fearful ignorance.
This is the world my daughter is entering. A world that has become a product of fear, greed and desensitization. A world where false gods and prophets control the lives, minds and actions of a human race that has steadily become more and more robotic. But if you admit the flaws, admit the fear, admit the reality, you can see the true beauty of what this world once was, is and can be. Before I die, I hope to see this beauty again…and for the first time.                I will hope for us all.

A message from an intelligent Muslim friend.

I opened my email to find a surprising email. I have hope to develop more conversations like this. The text below is the message I received. I hope to hear more from this person.

“Dear tangentialRealist, i am a Muslim. I like your fb group [though i have not clicked “like”], because i respect your honesty. Since you are welcoming ideas, please my views, which i offer with humility. I feel religion has become corrupted by men of religion. Consequently different religions relate with a view to scorekeeping [rather than serving humanity in the here & now].  If there is any good in Islam [i believe there is plenty, which i observed in my grandMa’s life (not riddled by priestly prescriptions)], then in the 21st C it is the role Islam avails women by the Hadith “THE SON’S PARADISE IS UNDER THE MOTHER’S FEET” [not in Quran]. Having grown up in the third world, i have observed [not experienced] the hardship involved eking out a living from farming. Whilst women have to bear children [as many as necessary for enough to survive to care of parents in old age], they have to depend on men. Thus the situation constrains into roles of homemaker for women & bread earner for men. Now living in London, i observe women rebelling against such roles as much as availabity of bread earner roles due to an affluent economy. However, when it comes to sexual partnering, women suffer because with SWORDSWooooMANSHIP becoming as necessary as adultery is allowed [in game of relationships which is playable by recently affordable rules]. Yet in the consequent familial instability, children pay [often as foster home nomads]! In Islam, unless her children, are unafraid of burning in hell, a woman gains a position of respect from her children. Now i don’t know if Allah exists, whether heaven or hell exist, etc, but if there is one good thing in Islam, i feel this most certainly is it. I believe there are plenty of other good things in Islam. If only Muslim “holy” men would give a more conscientious emphasis to Quran.16.125 – 128, then perhaps more of Islam’s blessings [if there are any more! Allah knows, if He exists] might flower. Respectful regards from a humble Muslim”

Wise words of Douglas Adams.

“Religion…has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is,(“Here is an idea or notion that you’re not allowed to say anything bad about; you’re just not!”) If somebody votes for a party that you don’t agree with, you’re free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says “I mustn’t move a light switch on a Saturday”, you say, “I respect that”.
Why shouldn’t it be that’s it’s perfectly legitimate to support the Labour party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows – but to have an opinion about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe…no, that’s holy?
… We are used to not challenging religious ideas but it’s interesting how much of a furore Richard Dawkins creates when he does it! Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it because you’re not allowed to say these things. Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn’t be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn’t be”.
-Douglas Adams-

Individual Reality

The deeper we allow ourselves into our own minds the more we discover what individual reality is. The flaws, the secrets, the addictions…the morality, the empathy, the humanity. Some will admit and truly rationalize, while others will repress and desperately cling to the “self” they have fabricated. The self that allows them to excuse the dysfunction. So next time you lay awake mentally dissecting yourself, concentrate on what IS and if it’s really you.

Seen With The Mind

~Seen With The Mind~

Seen with the mind is the negative spectrum.
Existent before existence arrived.
Simplistic in form, is this elegant nature.
Creating each second,
Each fragment of time.

Transitions evolved, bringing life despite danger.
Randomizing the patterns,
Of how to survive.

So in chaos we breed
Our subconscious intentions.
Asking the questions, that place fear inside.
Desperate for comfort and pacification,
The stories begin,
Causing logic’s demise.

Reality waits for it’s realization.
Holding the path of progression in line.
Hindered only by products of our imaginations.
Intellegence is,
But not by design.
~MP~