I started a new gig today, working for the worlds largest aerospace company, on an innovative use of SOA. Evie and I turned up the southern beds and planted six blueberry bushes to the east of where I envision the goat pen in a year or so ;) I dog-proofed the gate and also planted (plant/varieties):
Evie and I traded in her red ’single chick’ car for an ‘old married lady with dog’ car today. We got a 2001 Volvo Wagon with 63k miles for <10k.
We took $2000 for the Golf because it was totally imploding. We might have gotten 3.5k via private sale, and would likely have put almost a grand into it getting it ready to sell - plus the hassle - so it was a fair trade.
Sweet!
AKA - Trading my way to financial freedom.
So what does one do when one comes into some money? The ’safe’ thing to do would be to invest it. The ’smart’ thing to do would be to use it to make more money. This is what separates an investor from a trader. Right now I am playing it both ways by putting my money in the hands of a competent investor who also is a competent trader and mentor. He is showing me the ropes and showing me how I too can learn to trade my way to financial freedom. By the way, that is the title of my first ‘textbook’ on the subject; Van Tharp’s “Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom“. Great read so far and I also highly recommend Curtis Faith’s “The Way of the Turtle“, which I liked so much I cribbed the title for a new category.
I haven’t made any trades yet, nor do I plan to for a while, but I am watching the moves of my mentor, studying theory, and contemplating the pros and cons of various systems used by traders.
One thing that I have heard in common from all these sources is that trading is mostly simple to understand and difficult to execute. This is because most good traders will tell you that it is psychology that separates the successful from the broke.
My mentor tells me that my software testing background, combined with my philosophical and spiritual views, should take me a long way toward actually achieving my goals of financial independence.
I plan to share all my own experiences along the way in this new category; “Way of the Turtle.”
Will history teach us nothing?
“The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced. The arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn’t want to go bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.”
- Marcus Tullius Cicero in Rome, 55 BC
You, perhaps more than any other, taught me how to explore the mind, by providing a simple framework whereby my imagination could know no bounds.
Thank you for your life’s work sweet man.
…These rules are strictly fantasy. Those wargamers who lack imagination, those who don’t care for Burroughs’ Martian adventures where John Carter is groping through black pits, who feel no thrill upon reading Howard’s Conan saga, who do not enjoy the de Camp & Pratt fantasies or Friz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser pitting their swords against evil sorceries will not be likely to find that these rules are the answer to their prayers. With this last bit of advice we invite you to read on and enjoy a “world” where the fantastic is fact and magic really works!
E.Gary Gygax
TSR Hobbies, Inc.
1 November 1973
Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
(reposted from a tribe discussion)
Forgive me if this is long…
First a bit of context. I have spent the past year recovering and living with the results of unfinished business regarding major surgery to remove life threatening tumors and nearly died in the process. It has been contrary to what many people might think, a very affirmational experience that I consider a great blessing. I have realized both renunciation and bodhichitta throughout the ordeal. Tomorrow, one year to the day, they open me back up for six hours or so to reverse an colonostomy, perform radio-thermal oblation on three metastasis in my liver, and repair an eight inch herniated scar from the last surgery. I have supreme faith in all three surgeons who will be performing ‘yet another days work’ on my behalf. During the past month I have been preparing myself for another potential brush with mortality by engaging in retreat at my local Dharma Center, preparing a proper will, and debating ideals of free will and determinism with y’all here on Tribe. Its been to quote my son; ‘All Good’. (except when my delusions get in the way ;) During this retreat I have been almost exclusively studying the topic of emptiness in order to develop a strong conceptual understanding of it and in particular how it relates to wisdom and the mind itself.
Tonight, I had a strange phenomenon occur that might fit in with our discussion here.
As I prepared for sleep, I re-read several passages from The Bodhicaryavatara Chapter IX: The Perfection of Wisdom for perhaps the hundredth time and then prayed to the Buddha Avalokiteshvara that I might have a direct experience of this wisdom realizing emptiness. I gathered my winds in the central channel as I have been instructed, witnessed clear light mind, and then into deep sleep. I awoke two hours later when my partner became very startled that a book had fallen off the shelf, landing on my forehead. I was not startled at all but picked it up, glanced at the cover, and placed it back on the shelf where it was before. It was The Bodhicaryavatara! It was a moment that I can only describe as precognition why I was not startled, reacted calmly, ‘knowing’ what had happened.
So I posit, what to ‘believe’ from this event:
a) Newton was right.
b) My wife is a light sleeper.
c) I read too much.
d) Everything becomes emptiness.
e) My wish was fulfilled.
f) Tribing is a meaningless activity.
g) All of the above.
h) Some of the above.
i) None of the above.
j) There is no ‘correct’ answer listed.
Anyhow, the passages…
96. It is impossible for consciousness, which has no form, to have contact; nor is it possible for a composite, because it is not a truly existent thing, as investigated earlier.
97. Thus, when there is no contact, how can feeling arise? What is the reason for this exertion? Who can be harmed by what?
98. If there is no one to experience feeling and if feeling does not exist, then after understanding this situation, why, oh craving, are you not shattered?
99. The mind that has a dream-like and illusion-like nature sees and touches. Since feeling arises together with the mind, it is not perceived by the mind.
100. What happens earlier is remembered but not experienced by what arises later. It does not experience itself, nor is it experienced by something else.
101. There is no one who experiences feeling. Hence, in reality, there is no feeling. Thus, in this identity-less bundle, who can be hurt by it?
102. The mind is not located in the sense facilities, or in form and other sense-objects, or in between them. The mind is also not found inside, or outside, or anywhere else.
103. That which is not in the body nor anywhere else, neither intermingled nor somewhere separate, is nothing. Therefore, sentient beings are by nature liberated.
104. If cognition is prior to the object of cognition, in dependence on what does it arise? If cognition is simultaneous with the object of cognition, in dependence on what does it arise?
105. If it arises after the object of cognition, from what would cognition arise? In this way it is ascertained that no phenomenon comes into existence.
106. Objection: If conventional truth does not exist, how can there be the two truths? If it does exist due to another conventional truth, how can there be a liberated sentient being?
107. Madhyamika: One is an ideation of someone else’s mind, and one does not exist by one’s own conventional truth. After something has been ascertained, it exists; if not, it does not exist as a conventional reality either.
108. The two, conception and the conceived, are mutually dependent; just as every analysis is expressed by referring to what is commonly known.
I’m sitting in the center drinking some hot tea and listening to the wind blow - or is that the tea kettle - it sounds like Mt. Meru in here! It has been a wonderful experience to engage in retreat with my Sangha this month. I have gotten just a taste of what a ‘real’ retreat might be like and now I can cultivate the sincere wish to make that happen in the future. I say a taste because life was not put on hold or anything for this month and I have split my time between the center and home to take care of the children and work. I am officially on FMLA as of last Wednesday and that has improved my mood somewhat considerably. It was a wise decision to take time off before surgery this time to wrap-up loose ends and just plain relax. Evie and I are going to La Conner this weekend to spend some Q-time together and I am really looking forward to that. Mostly it has been really nice to get more comfortable at the center and feel a sense of ownership by taking part in the everyday activities such as cooking and cleaning around here. Many wonderful opportunities for giving, receiving, and stimulating conversations have presented themselves and as Gen Khedrub mentioned to me prior to my stay, when living at a Dharma center you sometimes learn just by osmosis. I definitely feel that both my practice and relationships with Sangha have been strengthened considerably - it has been a great opportunity to stretch.
A friend asked the other day what enlightenment was exactly and I had to consult with my Spiritual Guide who referred me to the back of Joyful Path To Good Fortune, where it is stated that enlightenment occurs when any being eliminates the two obstructions of delusion and the karmic imprints of delusion - saṃskāra. But how to remove them specifically?
These teachings form the basis of the Shurangama Sutra which gives the most detailed explanation of the Buddha’s teachings concerning the mind. It is said that once when Buddha was preaching the Dharma that Ananda arose halfway through and gave praise to Buddha because he understood clearly and Purnamaitreyaniputra - who was apparently a more advanced practitioner - asked why it was that a Ananda could understand while he could not, and so Buddha explained the two kinds of obstructions - based on affliction and doubt - that must be cleansed for full enlightenment. This is also taught as the selflessness of person and the selflessness of phenomena.
The Bodhisattva Nagarjuna is said to have preserved these teachings and they later made their way to China where they were translated in 705 by an unknown Indian bhiksu (some say his name was Shramana Paramiti) as “The Summit of the Great Buddha, The Final Meaning of Verification though Cultivation of the Secret Cause of the Tathagatas, and [Foremost] Shurangama of All Bodhisattvas’ Ten Thousand Practices Sutra.”
It is said by Venerable Master Hsuan Hua that;
The (many) obstructions are also discussed in greater detail in the Prajna Paramita Sutra and the Heart Sutra where the great Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara explains the emptiness of all things and phenomena quite eloquently.
See also: http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/Buddhism/Shurangama/Shurangama.htm
Seven days of Lamrim — twenty-one meditations, scheduled four per day, into one week — the essence of all 84,000 of Buddha Sakyamuni’s teachings. And thus, the wheel turns. Next week it repeats once more in silence according to our guru’s instruction, passed down one spiritual guide at a time, through Atisha, Je Tsongkhapa, and into the world of today via Geshe-la’s kindness. My meditations are gradually becoming less distracted as I intentionally recognize them arising, and set them aside. Re-occurring themes are surgery and job related. I am stretching and strengthening my ability to sit through things and contemplate clearly, this is the essence of lamrim, to contemplate the causes and conditions for enlightenment to occur, one at a time, over and over, until they become your nature.
I am also most fortunate to have found a partner who will walk, and sit, and contemplate this path with me, thank you sweetie :)
_/|\_
the alarm reminds;
rise and shine! — you’re late again!!
my fast continues…
Today was a dream come true- I got to play a gig with fellow Sangha musicians MEL WATSON, her partner Jen, and Linda Fane on percussion, as ‘The Migrators’. It was great to get out the brushes and play simple grooves on the traps. I look forward to playing with Mel again in the future!
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