Reflection on Reason

Just a quick entry on something that captured my attention. As a man who seeks knowledge, a philosopher if you will, I tend to ask many questions. And, with these questions I obviously arrive at all understanding by way of reason. So, given my emphasis on the importance of reason I now question if the world is reasonable. That is to say, just as one might ask "what if religion is wrong," I ask the same question of reason.

Now I do think reason is necessary in the civilized world (i.e "reality"), but I do believe that being is beyond that. "We" are something more profound, and that this profundity is covered and masked by what we are right now. Hence, the human condition. I am trapped by this body, but only trapped in the sense that my understanding of reality is confused, and must be examined thoroughly in order to recognize my entrapment. It's complicated. But, for those who follow Buddhism or Hinduism it is not so complicated. In theory yes, but practice-no. In my dealings with meditation, it is the closest one can get to a deeper kind of truth. Life is too complex to not try and slow things down and reflect on who you are. It's easy to say that you are weak and that there is something ultimate (GOD) that is there to help you. It is more difficult to state that you are your own God (until further notice) because you are then accountable for your actions in THIS lifetime, not the next. Morality makes better sense with the latter. Anyways, I digress. I blog worse than I contemplate, so forgive me. I'm a lil' rusty...

I'm back

Its been a busy semester, but it's over. It's time to get back to my writing in lieu of my previous assigned school writing.

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say. ~Anaïs Nin

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

- Albert Einstein

C'est Vrai

This one was so spot on I had to post it.



Joshua Ryan Dellinger wroteat 2:14pm
No, Skot. Please consider voting for Obama. McCain's plan will devastate this country, as it intends to rely on the same mechanisms that have brought us to the brink of ruin already. I can't say I fully back Obama, but reform is certainly what we need now, and I can't imagine a worst candidate than McCain, nor this demonic woman he has for his VP.I think the choice can be summarized in response to this question: do you want someone in power who wouldn't let a rape victim choose to abort their pregnancy? Or how about this one: do you want someone in power who wants to *further deregulate* the health insurance industry? Or: do you want the war in Iraq to continue, despite calls from the Iraqi people for us to leave? Obama will solve all these problems, and will alleviate burdens on the middle class...as every democratic president does. McCain supports tax cuts for those making over 250,000 and believes you're not "rich" until you have 5 million in assets. We can't let this man in.

meilleur.

Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible. We're not giving up. We're waiting for a better opportunity to win.

~ Lois McMaster Bujold

now in production.

the fallen soldier.

I. Introduction
II. “Father”
III. …strength…
IV. …love…
V. …courage…
VI. …virtue…
VII. …wisdom…
VIII. Farewell

lost.

"You might be a big fish in a little pond, doesn't mean you've won, 'cause along may come a bigger one...and you'll be lost..."

~ Coldplay

a work in progress.

the fallen soldier.

Introduction

"I remember when we didn't wear helmets in football." This was one of the first stories my grandfather told me which, lucky for me, was the first among many others to come.

As far back as I can remember he had been a strong and giant-like man. His hands were enormous even on his deathbed. I remember only two days ago I sat across from him, in his room, and had what I’d pretty much expected to be my last conversation with my elder father. We spoke only briefly, but I can vividly remember he preferred my directions to my mother’s, a woman who is queen of unnecessary back roads. Anyway, I mentioned the size of my grandfather’s hands. I found it interesting that this somehow made me comfortable, and deep down I realized that I knew why. It’s simple really, I was in denial. I thought that somehow the normality of his hands, attached to his withered and decrepit body, could leave me a little sense of familiarity, a tiny dose of hope. But believe me, that isn’t how I will remember my grandfather. The real story is far more interesting…

Bad Ethics

It is clear that our government's "morality" has slipped away from the high standards of yesteryear. Without even elaborating on the many reasons of why I have this belief, I would like to point out something that we as Americans all should know.

Today (6.25.08) the supreme court ruled that in favor of Exxon Valdez in the sense that punitive damages would be downsized to a mere $550 million instead of the suggested $2.5 billion. Justice Stevens sums up this political mistake in his quote: “In light of Exxon’s decision to permit a lapsed alcoholic to command a supertanker carrying tens of millions of gallons of crude oil though the treacherous waters of Prince William Sound, thereby endangering all of the individuals who depended upon the sound for their livelihoods,” Justice Stevens wrote, “the jury could easily have given expression to its moral condemnation of Exxon’s conduct in the form of this award.”

The question I want to leave you with is this; what kind of country and justice system do we have when we put people in prison for killing endangered species and put people to death for murder, but corporations get away with paying a set price tag for killing hundreds of thousands of birds and marine wildlife? We should think about our environment, the species within the environment, and how the overall effect of the aforementioned, in turn, affects humans and society.

Post Vipassana

My sister asked me to write a few things about myself, so I decided to add a short essay summing up my thoughts post vipassana. They are as follows...

…the path of “enlightenment”…
“Everything is temporary.”
~ The Buddha
It has been said by many great thinkers in history that the most important thing in life is; life itself. It seems very obvious to the analytical reader or the philosophical debater, but those with the true understanding of life are those with the experiential understanding of what life is, and more importantly, isn’t. This experiential understanding is symmetrically similar to intellectual understanding, but one must balance the two; total equilibrium of mind over matter and vice versa. Like any other important force, concept, or theory in the universe, the analytical understanding of the value of life must coincide, and be perfectly balanced with, the effort and discipline of actually living the life that you so passionately read, write, and talk about. It may be cliché, but if you talk the talk you must walk the walk. People can see right through a person who tries to mold themselves around their own sense of identity, but if you don’t live that identity, if you only cling to the idea that this is how “you” want to be, you never really find the person that you so desperately yearn to explore. It’s almost like playing cover songs in a band your entire life. In the beginning you’re young and reckless and you feel like you have plenty of time to conquer the music biz writing your own music. But, the truth is, by age fifty you’re playing the same covers and still hoping to write that hit song. You can never write the song if you don’t pick up the pen. You’ll never write the song if your main focus is someone else’s song. Be yourself and no one else.

my free vacation.

From: Mid-Atlantic Vipassana Registration

[mailto:registration@midatlantic.us.dhamma.org]

Sent: Tue 4/15/2008 10:20 AM

To: Sides, Brandon

Subject: 5/14/2008 Vipassana Course Confirmation

To: Brandon Sides

Course: 5/14/2008 - 5/25/2008

You are registered to attend the Vipassana meditation course starting on

5/14/2008 and ending on 5/25/2008. Please respond to this e-mail either

confirming your attendance if you definitely plan on being there, or by

canceling if you will not be able to attend.

We often experience waiting lists for courses. If the course is full, and

you do not confirm within one week, your place may be given to someone on

the waiting list.

If you would like to carpool to the course by either offering or receiving a

ride, please let us know this in your reply. Also, please feel free to

contact us if you have any questions or concerns about the course.

Thank you for your prompt response. Please be sure to include the entire

content of this message in your reply.

Mid-Atlantic Vipassana Association

be nice.

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become."

~ Buddha

call it self evident.

Mind is the Master-Power that molds and makes,
And Man is Mind, and evermore he takes
The tool of thought, and, shaping what he wills
Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills:--
He thinks in secret, and it come to pass:
Environment is but his looking glass...

in the moment.

"Slow down everyone, your movin' too fast. Frames can't catch you when your movin' like that..."

~ Jack Johnson

“We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

for future publication.

After my research on a few essays due in my modern philosophy class, I stumbled upon Marx's view of alienation. In previous context I had interpreted Marx's alienation through the lens of religion, but now I have an interpretation through the lens of capitalism. Through the lens of capitalism, I hope to write a book/paper on Marx's alienation titled:

"The more you work the less you live: A Marxian metaphor on the balance between work and play."

- It will mainly be about the actuality of your vocation controlling the life you should be living. It is the overtaking of your existence. The produced (consumer products) becomes more important than the producer (worker) so to speak.

Other viewpoints I will interject into to the book/paper:

…..the objectification of labor if…the relation of the worker to the product of labor that is foreign/alien….

“It is the same in religion. The more man puts into God, the less he retains within himself. The worker places his life in the object; but now it no longer belongs to him, but to the object...”

morality...

I'm in the process of reconstructing (or intuitively constructing) the origin of morality. I feel it may converge with Nietzche's "Genealogy of Morality", but who knows.

The illustration begins with man as animal. The unevolved, primitive man that has not even come close to a conception of communication. These peoples are nestled in herds of families, and no where near to becoming clans...

easter...

As with almost all "Christian" holidays, Easter has been secularized and commercialized. The dichotomous nature of Easter and its symbols, however, is not necessarily a modern fabrication.

Since its conception as a holy celebration in the second century, Easter has had its non-religious side. In fact, Easter was originally a pagan festival.
The ancient Saxons celebrated the return of spring with an uproarious festival commemorating their goddess of offspring and of springtime, Eastre. When the second-century Christian missionaries encountered the tribes of the north with their pagan celebrations, they attempted to convert them to Christianity. They did so, however, in a clandestine manner.

It would have been suicide for the very early Christian converts to celebrate their holy days with observances that did not coincide with celebrations that already existed. To save lives, the missionaries cleverly decided to spread their religious message slowly throughout the populations by allowing them to continue to celebrate pagan feasts, but to do so in a Christian manner.
As it happened, the pagan festival of Eastre occurred at the same time of year as the Christian observance of the Resurrection of Christ. It made sense, therefore, to alter the festival itself, to make it a Christian celebration as converts were slowly won over. The early name, Eastre, was eventually changed to its modern spelling, Easter.

The Date of Easter

Prior to A.D. 325, Easter was variously celebrated on different days of the week, including Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. In that year, the Council of Nicaea was convened by emperor Constantine. It issued the Easter Rule which states that Easter shall be celebrated on the first Sunday that occurs after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox. However, a caveat must be introduced here. The "full moon" in the rule is the ecclesiastical full moon, which is defined as the fourteenth day of a tabular lunation, where day 1 corresponds to the ecclesiastical New Moon. It does not always occur on the same date as the astronomical full moon. The ecclesiastical "vernal equinox" is always on March 21. Therefore, Easter must be celebrated on a Sunday between the dates of March 22 and April 25.

The Easter Bunny

The Easter Bunny is not a modern invention. The symbol originated with the pagan festival of Eastre. The goddess, Eastre, was worshipped by the Anglo-Saxons through her earthly symbol, the rabbit.
The Germans brought the symbol of the Easter rabbit to America. It was widely ignored by other Christians until shortly after the Civil War. In fact, Easter itself was not widely celebrated in America until after that time.

The Easter Egg

As with the Easter Bunny and the holiday itself, the Easter Egg predates the Christian holiday of Easter. The exchange of eggs in the springtime is a custom that was centuries old when Easter was first celebrated by Christians.
From the earliest times, the egg was a symbol of rebirth in most cultures. Eggs were often wrapped in gold leaf or, if you were a peasant, colored brightly by boiling them with the leaves or petals of certain flowers.
Today, children hunt colored eggs and place them in Easter baskets along with the modern version of real Easter eggs -- those made of plastic or chocolate candy.



"Easter". This site is maintained by Wilstar. http://wilstar.com/holidays/easter.htm (accessed Sunday, March 23, 2008).

humility.

"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for."

-Epicurus

"The Road Not Taken"

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost

makes sense.

"Excellence is not a singular act, but a habit. You are what you repeatedly do."

-Shaquille O'neal

"If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character... Would you slow down? Or Speed up?"

-Chuck Palahniuk

WWJD.

In a recent conversation with a Theologian, I stumbled upon the notion of the values that Jesus promoted and wondered how they would fit in modern society. We've all heard the term W.W.J.D. from bracelets to church signage, but the question remains; does modern Christianity abide by that philosophy?

I believe I would be in the majority (of the minority) to say that Christianity today would be somewhat unrecognizable to Jesus. Insofar as from politics to churches themselves, corruption and selfish tendencies creep into the realm of religion more often than not. For example: Katrina destroyed not only lives but also livelihoods as well. Our "Christian" government didn't do near enough to reduce suffering in the aftermath of that horrible situation.

*I will take nothing away from the many churches and organizations that did give to New Orleans, compassion is always a glorious virtue.*

The church today has become a community, in many ways good, but also bad in some cases. I'm sure most do not tithe with the mentality that they are grateful to help pay for their pastor's lease on their shiny new Cadillac. Again, I'm not making the assumption that all churches and pastor's are this way, but you would be lying by saying you didn't know about certain church spending that may be deemed extravagant.

Now for my point. I feel that if Jesus, the same Jesus that taught compassion and humility, were to assess the churches of America today, he would be somewhat ashamed. Therefore, I conclude with the challenge of Christianity. For reasons of sincerity and fundamentalism, I feel that the reduction of suffering and the re-evaluation of morality should be the modern church's primary objective. Modern Christianity should preach to the poor and strive to overcome inequality. I mean hey, what would Jesus do?

"I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
-Picasso

"Praise God who has many names, but the devil has many more..."

-Dave Matthews

An Introduction to Dreams

The dream world. This amazing, yet complex world is experienced by most everyone that considers themselves human. Like metaphysics and knowledge, dreams have been an object of interpretation and investigation throughout human civilization. Hell, maybe even the uncivilized hominids had dreams, maybe they were less complex, but if I can watch my roommate’s dog drift through the dream world, I’m sure our early unevolved “selves” could do it as well.

Are dreams important, and if so, why? I find myself with the belief that dreams are important. Maybe they are important in a spiritual sense, maybe they are a link to a whole new dimension of reality. Usually maybes don’t work in facilitating fact in today’s world, but these maybes do tell us something; they tell us that we are working towards theories of the unknown, a very special unknown called dreaming (lucid dreaming, etc.).

What makes this unknown so special? Well, there are many answers to this question. From amazing journeys of flight, visitations from deceased loved ones, or sex with a total stranger, dreams are certainly special by definition. But what about other ways of interpreting dreams? It is said that Albert Einstein attributed his theory of relativity with a dream. The bible is filled with these interpretations of dreams. Even today dreams are useful scientific tools. For example, the scientist responsible for creating the self sustaining lunar base, the base that is being built right now for NASA, gives all the credit for his idea to a dream he had. Therefore, I conclude along with many others, that we have so much to learn from this “unknown” virtual reality we call dreaming.

This post is just an introduction to the phenomenon of dreams, but I assure you, there will be more to come.

"A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.”

-William Shakespeare

"When he who hears does not know what he who speaks means, and when he who speaks does not know what he himself means, that is philosophy."

-Voltaire

A Poem by Anne Sexton...

"Earth, earth, riding your merry-go-round toward extinction. How fear-some must the headlines be about tomorrow before people change their ways today?"

Tribute to a "Koan"...

First off, a Koan is usually described as a story, dialogue, question, or statement given by a Buddhist teacher (monk). This is usually found in the tradition of Zen (Chen) Buddhism. The purpose is for a Zen practitioner's mind to match the mind of an enlightened being.

Here's an example:

Shuzan held out his short staff and said, " If you call this a short staff, you oppose its reality. If you do not call it a short staff, you ignore the fact. Now what do you wish to call this?"

Some may interpret this to be philosophical, and those that do would be entirely correct. I interpret this statement (by the way, we all interpret these Koans differently, that's the point) to be an epistemological criticism insofar as; we as finite beings in an infinite universe can't really claim to know anything (very, very philosophical).