New Thoughts/Way of Thinking?

I’m not enlightened, but I’m trying to understand enlightenment. Enlightenment doesn’t seem to be a realization, nor does it appear to be a process. Neither a journey nor a destination, but linked to the two. Understanding. Standing. Overstanding. Intra/interstanding? Holonistic? How can I try to explain when the language doesn’t exist? Demonstratively, I’ll try.

How often do we hear the old cliché, “It’s not the destination that matters, but the journey?” Often, but the more I am exposed to that idea the less it seems to explain. And we never ask follow up questions for nuance. We don’t ask, “Is it the journey itself that matters?” or “Is it that we went on a journey that matters?” or “Is it what we experienced on said journey that matters?” Indeed, is it all of those and more that matter? Even then we would be left with an incomplete picture.

Then there’s the idea of enlightenment being some sort of transcendence: The Buddha who transcended desire or the Christian united with their creator. These are just a holon that comes at the end of the journey though – again, we’re left with model that is lacking.

If the journey and the destination themselves aren’t accurately, metaphorically representative of enlightenment then what is? Perhaps your feet? One can have feet but not motivation to use them. But the will that drives the use of feet can just as easily decide to remain still. Would that be meditation? Or intellectual-materialism? These things I can’t answer.

What I can say is everything is everything. It all boils down to one something. One universe, one illusion, one world, one love, one mind, one… And there’s no way of knowing if it’s cyclical like a circle/sphere, or infinitely ever-changing/uncontained, or a failure of our 4 dimensional thought prevent us from finding accurate representation.

From what I can tell though (in inaccurate language), enlightenment is trying to understand. In that sense, Buddhism is not trying to come to terms with death, but to understand it, by contemplating that still, silent, empty, absence of the void.

Henry Ferwyfer is The Paper Poncho

Where are my beans? They're on a trapeze
Darling please, read the sneeze
Don't eat that Steve, you'll die!
Wondering why I'm high as the sky
no more

Toady is as toady was today
...



In other news, beer with espresso is gross, don't drink that Steve!

New Testament & Space Colonization

I don't have anything tying the two together. I'm reading the New Testament. I'm not done with Matthew yet and finishing might not happen because I run across things like this:

"Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven." Matthew 6.1

"Everyone therefor who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven;" Matthew 10.32

At first read, these seem to be completely contradictory - in order to make sense of this I have to start reinterpreting the rules that came before and play games of semantics. Here's where I have a problem: Matthew has just said Jesus has given a bunch of rules and none of them was say my name to others. Furthermore, whenever he cured someone's afflictions he would tell them to not tell others. Faith alone was only enough when he was around. Once Jesus dies, it takes putting his wisdom into practice to get into heaven. Herein lies my complaint: to make sense of 10.32 I have to say that that just means saying you believe in Jesus. The problem with that is the good news of Jesus comes with his message... Maybe Matthew will clear up this confusion (probably due to postmortem editing at the Council of Nicaea), but I doubt it seeing as Matthew hasn't yet referenced his prior writing.

And for the other unrelated part of this post: I want to be a pioneer. I want to go travel off the planet. So I want to become a colonist on the Luna or Mars. That would be so fucking sweet.

Peace.