Category: Musings

Language – 800 years ago.

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

The spoken language around here in Brittany would be evolving back then. The founding saints, purportedly mostly Welsh, and from near Llantwit Major in Glamorgan would have spoken Welsh.  There was St Illtud’s “academy”. They moved here around 500 AD as Welsh was changing from the other Brittonic languages such as Cornish or old Cornish Kernewek Koth. In around 500 Welsh would have been more similar to Kernewek.  There was migration from all the west coast of Britain. Cornish resembles Breton well.

There would be residual Latin which was slowly morphing into medieval French. So far, I have found out that there are few texts in rakkrennvrezhoneg or pre-medieval Breton. There are plenty of Welsh texts.

There are old texts from Brittany in Latin. I am guessing that the clergy and those with money were versed in Latin and it was used to “translate” a sort of universal.

So, if I was incarnate around 800 years ago as a “priest” or member of a religious order I would have had to speak Latin and if on crusade medieval French. I would have spoken rakkrennvrezhoneg with the locals

One can see that the shape of word in Medieval French is closer to Breton than modern French

The word order in The Song of Roland is different but I can interpolate some meaning using French and my rusty “O” level Latin.

Looks like I have a new thing to invetsigate on the rainy days.

Quotations from English French and Breton Wikipedia

Medieval Welsh literature is the literature written in the Welsh language during the Middle Ages. This includes material starting from the 5th century AD, when Welsh was in the process of becoming distinct from Common Brittonic and continuing to the works of the 16th century.

The Welsh language became distinct from other dialects of Old British sometime between AD 400 and 700; the earliest surviving literature in Welsh is poetry dating from this period. The poetic tradition represented in the work of Y Cynfeirdd (“The Early Poets”), as they are known, then survives for over a thousand years to the work of the Poets of the Nobility in the 16th century.

The core tradition was praise poetry; and the poet Taliesin was regarded as the first in the line. The other aspect of the tradition was the professionalism of the poets and their reliance on patronage from kings, princes and nobles for their living, similar to the way Irish bards and Norse skalds were patronized for the production of complex, often highly alliterative forms of verse. The fall of the Kingdom of Gwynedd and the loss of Welsh independence in any form in 1282 proved a crisis in the tradition, but one that was eventually overcome. It led to the innovation of the development of the cywydd meter, a looser definition of praise, and a reliance on the nobility for patronage.

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Le moyen breton (krennvrezhoneg en breton moderne) est le nom que l’on donne à la langue brittonique parlé en Bretagne de la fin du XIe siècle à la première partie du XVIIe siècle. On place généralement la date de fin en 1659 lors de la sortie du dictionnaire du père Julien Maunoir. Il a été précédé par le vieux breton et suivi par le breton moderne.

Elle a fourni une littérature, une poésie, mais surtout un théâtre, d’inspiration religieuse.

Chronologie du moyen breton

On distingue plusieurs périodes :

  • 1100 – 1450 : pré moyen breton
  • 1450 – 1600 : moyen breton classique
  • 1600 – 1659 : moyen breton tardif

Caractéristiques du moyen breton

Les emprunts au français deviennent très nombreux. Le français est alors la langue la plus influente de l’Europe et influence également l’anglais. D’une manière étonnante quand un mot breton ressemble à de l’anglais, il provient généralement du moyen français. Ex. : to strive; strivañ : s’efforcer de

  • Le -ff traduit un v nasalisé. Cependant, à la fin du moyen breton le v disparaîtra complètement, à l’exception du dialecte guérandais ou du Goélo (prononcé f),
  • Le son dh est marqué par z (menez, scoaz…),
  • Le son th est transcrit par z, tz ou zz (scuiz, bartz, hennez, harzaff),
  • Le son ts, qui vient la plupart du temps de nom français est transcrit par ç, cc, cz,
  • Le son [oe] évolue en oa (sauf en vannetais-guérandais et Haute-Cornouaille où il reste oe. Il reste oe également au Pays de galles),
  • Le son eu venant des débuts de l’ancien breton.

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krennvrezhoneg

Ar c’hrennvrezhoneg eo ar stumm eus ar brezhoneg a veze komzet ha skrivet etre dibenn an XIvet kantved ha kreiz ar XVIIvet kantved.

Mareadoù ar C’hrennvrezhoneg

  • 1100 – 1450 : rakkrennvrezhoneg
  • 1450 – 1600 : krennvrezhoneg klasel
  • 1600 – 1659 : krennvrezhoneg diwezhat

Ar rakkrennvrezhoneg

Eus ar rakkrennvrezhoneg ne vez anavezet nemet spisc’herioù, anvioù-tud hag anvioù-lec’h.

Ivonet Omnes en deus skrivet ur varzhoneg war marzh an dornskrid e oa o sevel dre eilskrivañ war-dro ar bloavezhioù 1350 ; setu amañ ar varzhoneg hag he reizhiad klotennoù :

An guen heguen am laouenas,

An hegarat an lacat glas,

Mar ham guorant va karantic,

Da vout in nos o he kostic.

Vam garet, nep pret.

————-

Catholicon, geriadur brezhoneg-galleg-latin Jehan Lagadeuc, skrivet e 1464 ha moullet e 1499

Catholicon eo anv ar geriadur kentañ e brezhoneg, a oa bet skrivet e teir yezh, brezhoneg, galleg ha latin : ennañ e vez kavet an droidigezh c’hallek eus ar gerioù brezhonek kement hag o c’hevatal e latin.

Ar c’hentañ geriadur galleg an hini eo ivez enta ha war an dro ar c’hentañ geriadur teiryezhek er bed.

Savet e voe, pe beurechuet da vihanañ, e 1464 (d’ar 16 a viz Eost hervez) gant Jehan Lagadeuc, person e Plougonven, ha moullet e voe evit ar wech kentañ d’ar 5 a viz Du 1499 e Landreger gant Jehan Calvez (Euzen Roperz e lizherennour). O soñjal e kloareged yaouank Breizh o vont war o studi e oa bet savet an oberenn-mañ evit o skoazellañ da zeskiñ latin evel ma vez diskouezet splann amañ dindan (bet treuzskrivet e brezhoneg a-vremañ) :

    Me, Yann Lagadeg, eus parrez Plougonven, en eskopti Treger, Bachelour war an arzoù hag an dekredoù, goude ma n’on ket dellezek d’en ober, savet am eus al levr bihan-mañ evit talvezout da gloer vihan baour Breizh peotramant d’ar re zo dizesk war al latin.

Anvet e oa bet Catholicon (geriadur hollel), pa ne oa ket bet roet an anv-se gant an oberour, moarvat diwar anv ur geriadur all, ar geriadur latin brudet a oa anvet Catholicon ivez (Summa grammaticalis quae vocatur Catholicon), savet gant an Dominikan Giovanni Balbi (Johannes Januensis de Balbis), eus Genova, hag echuet d’ar 7 a viz Meurzh 1286.

—-

La Chanson de Roland

Removal of the Ten Buddhist Fetters and Psychology

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Removal of the Ten Buddhist Fetters and Psychology

I have always thought that Buddhism is pretty radical. If one removes all ten fetters one no longer reincarnates, so the theory goes.  In the context of Abhidhamma Pitaka the vast majority of humans have no experience beyond the first couple of fetters. Discussion therefore is based on scripture and not personal experience; it is by way of speculation.

The first fetter of self can be thought of as the business of psychology, one is encouraged therein to have a notion of self, an identity. If you lack many of the emotions in the second enumeration you might get a diagnosis of Aspergers’ or clinical depression. You certainly would not have a starring role in Dallas or East Enders.

The teachings of Buddha if applied take one way beyond psychology and the socio-political framing of mundane human experience. It, the fetter, could be called the limitation of and by social conditioning, complying with societal ideas and trying to fit therein. Making an image to attempt to convey to others. If you think in terms of social media Abhidhamma Pitaka’s list of ten fetters are perhaps the guidebook to social popularity, the more you express the more likes and followers you get. Does Trump exhibit any of these fetters?

I find some of the available Buddhist interpretations a bit absolutist. Complete removal of reproductive urge is probably not possible. Porn hub reinforces the first fetter kāma-rāga.   

Getting things in perspective and balanced is probably a healthier way. After all the Diamond sutra admonishes against seeking the absolute. A classic sign of depression is loss of libido. Psychologists may contest the teachings of Siddhartha.

What are the ten fetters in Buddhist tradition?

 This by Andrei Palskoi on Quora

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-ten-fetters-in-Buddhist-tradition

The fetters are attachments to illusory ideas about how reality is built and operates. They are the rules that you believe are solid and unbreakable, whereas in fact they are nothing more than ephemeral mental contracts.

Each of them can be seen as a counterweight applied to balance the scales after they’ve been originally tipped off by the 10th fetter, culminating with the 1st fetter like a cork sealing the jinn’s bottle. They are intended to create and/or restore the illusion of stability, and the price for having that illusion is the lack of freedom – that’s why they called “fetters”. They feel important to abide by, even when they result in suffering.

There are many different interpretations of their meaning. Below is mine – by no means accurate or even orthodox, but it’s one of those things where you cannot rely on dogmas (see fetter #3).

  1. Person – thinking that there is an actual object with fixed properties called “a person”, or “self”. Once the imaginary description of “who you are” is formed, there is a strong feeling of being obligated to act in accordance with how that “you” would act. Essentially, in this fetter you are bound by the mental model of yourself. The fear of violating this fetter is that for your reputation in your own or someone else’s eyes. Also, many other stories and beliefs are predicated on the idea of “you” as an actor playing a crucial role in them.
  2. Doubt – traditionally by this it is meant doubt in Buddha’s teachings. Effectively, it is doubt that there is indeed a way back out of your existential conundrum. It binds you into arguing about everything, rather than putting sincere whole-hearted effort into looking at the facts and be willing to honestly admit what they show, even if it goes against your preconceived beliefs.

{often very specifically about the teachings of Buddha and the Dharma my addition}.

  1. Rites and rituals – this includes dogmas, habits and any other kind of mind automation. It binds you into thinking that if “things were this way before”, they are expected to continue the same way. This fetter is an inertia of mind, i.e. repeating what it was accustomed to doing. It is also a belief in magic that merely by doing some rituals that you don’t understand you can control the experiences and prevent unwanted ones from happening. Basically, relying on stale old recipes and ignoring the new realities of the moment.
  2. Desire, or lust – belief that you can want a form and when you do, you must run after it. Effectively, it is imagining some experience and feeling irresistible draw to falling into it, as well as aversion to the idea of not getting what’s desired. Together the 4th and 5th fetters are manifestations of the false belief that by mastering the art of pulling in pleasant experiences and pushing out unpleasant ones it is possible to achieve ever-lasting comfort.
  3. Aversion, or ill will – when something goes against your expectations (which is inevitable), you feel in your guts some invisible force that is presumably pushing you towards resistance in all its forms (hatred, fear, suppression, avoidance, etc.). Rather than an attachment to experiencing pleasant experiences, it is an attachment to reacting to unpleasant ones. This is where the suffering is born out of refusal to accept that ultimately there is no control of what happens.
  4. Forms – belief that reality consists of fixed objects with properties and feeling of being bound by those forms and their importance. Subject-object separation.
  5. Attachment to formless ideas – belief that apart from the pure “being”, there are other fundamental qualities of experience such as time and space, and there is witnessing of these qualities through perception. This is where the idea of “independent reality” is born.
  6. Conceit – belief that the mental idea of what is going on is more important than the actual experience. This is a belief that the experience must “make sense”, which begins with the simplest sense of pure “being” – the first fixed mental construct, the first attempt to fabricate an illusion of something reliable, predictable and lasting, something that can be grasped at.
  7. Restlessness – the outcome of the original ignorance, chaotic flow of ever-changing experiences with no fixed structure whatsoever. The first anxiety of having nothing to grasp at. The other 8 fetters are essentially failed attempts to hide this anxiety, which can be felt again at any time when they don’t work.
  8. Ignorance – The beginning of the “flame” – falling for the false appearance of experiences and ignoring the true knowledge that there can be no experience that has any substance, permanence, satisfactoriness. A “big bang” manifestation of experiential reality, i.e. samsara. Conscious emptiness that accidentally confused itself into dreaming up the realm of experiences and cannot awaken back from its dream.

This from Wikipedia:

Abhidhamma Pitaka’s list of ten fetters

The Abhidhamma Pitaka’s Dhamma Sangani (Dhs. 1113-34) provides an alternate list of ten fetters, also found in the Khuddaka Nikaya’s Culla Niddesa (Nd2 656, 1463) and in post-canonical commentaries. This enumeration is:

  1. sensual lust (Pali: kāma-rāga)
  2. anger (paṭigha)
  3. conceit (māna)
  4. views (diṭṭhi) {opinions my addition}
  5. doubt (vicikicchā)
  6. attachment to rites and rituals (sīlabbata-parāmāsa)
  7. lust for existence (bhava-rāga)
  8. jealousy (issā)
  9. greed (macchariya)
  10. ignorance (avijjā).

The commentary mentions that views, doubt, attachment to rites and rituals, jealousy and greed are thrown off at the first stage of Awakening (sotāpatti); gross sensual lust and anger by the second stage (sakadāgāmitā) and even subtle forms of the same by the third stage (anāgāmitā); and conceit, lust for existence and ignorance by the fourth and final stage (arahatta).

The Wolf of Wall Street is not close to enlightenment, “greed is good!”

If you encountered someone who had overcome to a great extent these ten fetters how would you interact?

The notion of transactional “you scratch my back…” interaction would not work. They would not have the same emotional soap-opera buttons. They may even seem very boring and dead-pan.

Are they still alive? Are they completely overcome with anhedonia?

We are seeing the first fetter of “person” or “self” as a battleground for the so-called gender “debate” or slinging match. Self-image plays a role in anorexia and bulimia. Social media has created a zombie army of influencers, self-obsessed. People forget that image is imaginary and not real.  Yet they devote a lot of time and effort to image.

Removal of the Abhidhamma Pitaka’s fetters might imply a saintly person, an impossible thing. But there again human idealisation and absolutism comes in. The passage above suggests a sequential list based removal, a tick box approach. Done that, got the t-shirt. Isn’t it more likely that one would be working at removing the dramas/fetters all at the same time? Tick box thinking is not a high level overview. Goals achieved can cause conceit and ambition.

Twitter is full of aversion, or ill will. It fills our news programmes in Israel and Gaza, in the US presidential elections.

I’ll speculate that a psychologist / psychiatrist might have trouble framing and understanding a being largely free from these fetters. Maybe they would invent a new syndrome to categorize them…

Or they could lock them up in a loony bin, especially if they were not an ordained monk or priest in robes.

.

Life Divergences and the Wrong End of the Stick

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I have recently had a several months stint on LinkedIn. Because I am an “old fart” I went to university way back when it was much less common in the UK. My class size was of the order of 30. It was hard to get in. There was an in-department tea / snack room which served buttered toast. After a 9 AM chemistry lecture you could get coffee and toast and marmalade. We knew each other quite well and there was a lot of fraternisation between staff and students. Back then there was a lot of booze. It would be frowned upon today, Jurassic behaviours.

It is safe to conclude that when taking the integral of life time earnings of most of my university peer group, based on their LinkedIn profiles, I am at the bottom of the earnings table and I am not going to earn any more. I was the baby of the class being born end of August, but somehow also a social lynch pin. 4 out of 30 came from my school. Most of my peers have been successful whereas my “career” ended in 2007. I did some small “A” level science tutoring for a number of years. I retired around five years ago. Often it is the years 40-65 when people earn the most. I did not.

It could be said that I am a failure and that I failed.

I worked for over a decade as an academic at a top London university. Many of that peer group and people whom I once taught have had and are having way more success than me. There are big cheeses.

There are a number of possible explanations for why I quit at the age of 42. They include burn out, the so-called INFJ door slam, some mental health problems, or the renunciation of a way of life. I was very unhappy that my colleagues were talking about getting rid of people to improve the REF rating. Nice! I figured I could handle going better than others. The decision was quick and nobody anticipated it. I don’t recall having any discussions. I did not have a leaving party because I hate that kind of thing. I handed over my responsibilities and just left. Not many, very few, said goodbye. I thought at the time that it was handled poorly. British people can be awkward and scientists are not renowned for their interpersonal skills. I don’t believe anyone from there addressed the subject with me, certainly not meaningfully.

I was not anticipating what was to unfold in terms of meditations and chanting. My life certainly diverged from where it had been heading. There were consequences which I had not anticipated in terms of my employability.

If you meditate at least once daily for two decades you are likely to differ markedly in terms of psyche and mind from those who do not. If you don’t see someone for over a decade they may try to shoehorn their perception of you into their old version. They may be unable to conceive of what you are like now. They will not know “the point before mind”.

I have no ambition, no drive, no goals, no targets. I am not overly fussed about what happens to me. I am not interested in kudos. There is no driver for me to invent. I doubt that anything I might write is sellable, certainly not profitable. So, there is no point in me trying to publish for money. In one sense I am waiting until my time is up. The likelihood is that my time will be used gardening, doing DIY, strolling and a bit of blogging here and there. I will be a carer from time to time.

I am out of touch with the modern way of life. I have not made a social ‘phone call in near a decade. I have near zero social email use. Just as I am out of touch with modern life, the outer world is out of touch with me.  Only a few people know any of my email addresses and only one person has my ‘phone number. The hospital has it too.

Life is uncomplicated by connectivity.

When you watch the news, it is often a loner who is not popular who turns out to be the perpetrator of some killing or other. People are prejudiced about people like me. They may even pity me and feel sad. That is getting the wrong end of the stick by a country mile. People transfer their obsession with social contact onto me. I am quite happy not to have any. I can go days without speaking to anyone.

I certainly did not add a great deal to UK plc. I once co-founded a company which put dinner on the table for about fifty households. In principle I could have done more. But I did not.

It could be said that I was perhaps fated to do a “Reggie Perrin” only I never came back to work.

I do not know what fate has in store for me, if anything. It is very unlikely to have a wider impact or significance. This could be argued to be a waste. Or simply it is what it is.

Being a four cancer couple already sets us apart statistically. Colon cancer and basal cell carcinomas for me, myeloma and breast for her. She start posts operative radiotherapy next week. I get a “chimney sweep” colonoscopy next year. I am on prostate cancer watch because of slightly elevated PSA. No signs of any lesions in the MRI.

It is pretty clear what the next month is about. The important bit, that is.

I speculate that were I to meet any of the people from my peer groupings it would take quite a while for the penny to drop concerning just how far my life and beingness has diverged from theirs. And they would almost certainly get entirely the wrong end of the stick in any attempt at communication beyond the basic CV style “life fact” exchange. I’ll wager I could understand their lives better than they could understand mine. I came from “there”. I do not think that they could get it nor do I believe that I could convey. They would have to experience over a fair time interval to even begin.

I could be wrong…

I am divergent…

National Karma and Impunity

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There are some people, some nations, who believe they can do whatever they like, be barbaric for example and feel thoroughly justified in their right to slaughter. They imagine quasi-divine impunity and do not subscribe to the notion of cause and effect or karma.

The karma of empire is decay and loss of significance. History shows time and again that no empire lasts forever and towards the end corruption and decadence arrive for the wind-up party.

This afternoon I watched a news programme in which it was mooted that the economies of China and India would in time be larger than the USA. Things change, nothing lasts forever. The technological revolution in China has soared after the so-called cultural revolution of Mao Zedong.  The USA has behaved like a bullying teenager for a long time now. It has funded the destruction of Gaza and now Lebanon too. The United Nations has never looked so toothless as it does today.

The word is a scary place right now. I used to have a lot of respect for USA, but now with things like Iraq and an attempted coup d’état by mob a few years back, respect wanes. My foray into Twitter has done little to improve my opinion. There are some nut-jobs out there. In a few short weeks there will be an election. Some Americans are suggesting “Kamunism” that Harris is left wing! Really?  She is a tory to my eyes.

Americans it seems know very little about socialism or communism.

There is a real prospect of the nasty orange sociopath man getting back into power and sending cultural evolution backwards in time. Trump is a part of national karma. You get the leaders you need/deserve.

The rise of nationalism and me-first isolationism is swift. Brexit being an example of a withdrawal from internationalism of the saddest and most unnecessary kind. Everything has some kind of consequence. No divorce is 100% amicable, to expect a miracle is misguided. Yet some still yearn for the fairy godmother.

France very nearly had a right-wing nationalist government.

Wasn’t the 20s and 30s last century when the nationalists grew in popularity? Are we doing Groundhog Day? Zieg Heil!

I saw a post suggesting that the Confederate States could leave the union, USA, and still compete effectively globally as a new country on the world stage.

That which takes ages to put together can be rent asunder in a fit of pique.

The level of division in the USA is very high it was preceded by the remainer-brexiteer name calling which divided families in the UK.

It does not look to me that people are learning to grow up and live together.  Sandpit politics dominates.

There is a significant chance that the USA could implode and who is going to repay the ginormous national debt of the biggest economy if it does? How will Moody’s, Standard and Poor, and Fitch rate them.

Overriding, rewriting International Law to suit in order to bomb the fuck out of another country is an example set by the land of the free and home of the brave. You don’t have to be very brave in a F35 equipped with the latest electronic countermeasures. They set the precedent. Don’t worry they are only Muslims, kill them. Get Saddam. Take your shots and lie down dead.

In the fullness of time apparent impunity fades. Unexpected consequences start to arrive. USA has been caught sleeping twice.

I wonder what drama remains in geo-politics this year.

We have had five years of stuff happening which we did not expect. Covid, Ukraine, Gaza. What else is coming in?

Where we live is a pretty safe if there is a major escalation. We are not close to a likely target in a nuclear war. That I am evening thinking that is telling.

I have yet to hear of any situation in which mass death and destruction is the best answer. It seems an all too human default…

Humanity fails to learn by mistake…

Homo Sapiens is an arrogant misnomer…

The Four Stages of Awakening

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Some speculations and developing a train of thought….

This excerpted from Wikipedia

“The ordinary person

An ordinary person or puthujjana (Pali; Sanskrit: pṛthagjana; i.e. pritha: without, and jnana: knowledge) is trapped in the endless cycling of samsara. One is reborn, lives, and dies in endless rebirths, either as a deva, human, animal, male, female, neuter, ghost, asura, hell being, or various other entities on different categories of existence.

An ordinary entity has never seen and experienced the ultimate truth of Dharma and therefore has no way of finding an end to the predicament. It is only when suffering becomes acute, or seemingly unending, that an entity looks for a “solution” to and, persisting, finds the Dharma (the ultimate solution/truth).

The four stages of awakening in Early Buddhism and Theravada are four progressive stages culminating in full awakening (Bodhi) as an Arahant.

These four stages are Sotāpanna (stream-enterer), Sakadāgāmi (once-returner), Anāgāmi (non-returner), and Arahant (conqueror). The oldest Buddhist texts portray the Buddha as referring to people who are at one of these four stages as noble people (ariya-puggala) and the community of such persons as the noble sangha (ariya-sangha).

A stream-enterer, having abandoned the first three fetters, is guaranteed enlightenment within seven lifetimes, in the human or heavenly realms.

–

Sole dominion over the earth,
going to heaven,
lordship over all worlds:
the fruit of stream-entry
excels them.

–

Pratyekabuddhayāna is a Buddhist term for the mode or vehicle of enlightenment of a pratyekabuddha or paccekabuddha (Sanskrit and Pali respectively), a term which literally means “solitary buddha” or “a buddha on their own” (prati- each, eka-one). The pratyekabuddha is an individual who independently achieves liberation without the aid of teachers or guides and without teaching others to do the same. Pratyekabuddhas may give moral teachings but do not bring others to enlightenment. They leave no sangha (i.e. community) as a legacy to carry on the Dhamma (e.g. Buddha’s teachings).”

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There are some elements of Buddhism which I struggle with. This stems from the notion of evolution, a planetary principle. Things change and generally get more efficient adapting to the times and circumstances. Therefore, to my eyes it is very unlikely that a “human” would reincarnate as an animal. If the being had progressed from monkey to human, it would not make a retrograde step even as karmic punishment. The being, a human, reincarnating, would need a human form. There are plenty of human forms in which life is difficult, so there is no need to invoke life as a dog.

Bearing in mind that the origins of Buddhism are ~2500 years old, humanity was very different back then. Life was different and complex abstract thought very uncommon. The majority were illiterate and living in a manner not so very different from their livestock. Life was generally short and hard. Animism as a basis for interpreting world was using the available daily template, a reality encountered on a day to day basis. The teaching metaphor and allegory available to Siddartha would reflect daily life, belief and superstition.

I am not a member of any mundane Sangha and do not go to “teachings”. I am a trained academic researcher and have read widely on Buddhism. It seems to me there remains debate about what the various teachings mean. I am aware that discussion and/or arguing the toss is not the same as attainment. Being attached to wanting to be right or winning an argument does not seem enlightened to me, it seems petty.

People like definitions, especially those educated in modern ways. People might then discuss what an arahant is and profess on the subject. It is human nature. I’ll speculate that most people pertaining to being Buddhist have never nor will they ever meet one. The arahants can be seen aloof and uncaring.

A cornerstone of Buddhism is taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the sangha. Some schools of Buddhism subscribe to the Bodhisattva ideal. A Bodhisattva roughly means one who will {one day} become a Buddha. They can be “beginners” or be very highly realised. These realised Bodhisattvas put off their own nirvana in order to come back to teach. They can put if off for multiple lifetimes. There is entreaty and prayer begging them, so to do. There is a prejudice perhaps in that they are more compassionate than an Arahant who pisses off, but too much compassion can be a weakness.

If we see evolution as a ladder, if you are on the top step, you need to vacate it so that someone else can use it.

There is perhaps a prejudice against pratyekabuddhas in that they do not need a sangha or teachers nor do they have a sangha of their own.

Implicit is that people seek and need teachers or guides. The student can thereby hand his/her power over to a guru or teacher. In so doing the responsibility for development is shunned to an extent. The teacher becomes partially responsible for progress.  

Those in a sangha do not “like” those not in a sangha. The human “we” does not like the rejection of the outsider “they”.  They are not a part of the/our gang. I have seen pratyekabuddhas talked down as lesser Buddhas. A little thought suggests that THE Buddha was pratyekabuddha. The sangha came later. This snobbishness is logically unwarranted.

If you boil it down the fetters are simply human foibles, without which there would be no television soap operas. Getting rid of anger, envy, hatred and jealousy. Lessening attachment, ambition and pride makes for a less exciting and emotional script. One could say that the core direction of Buddhist development is a reduction in human folly, even a tendency to be less “human”. In the limit one no longer wants to partake of the drama and simply stops coming back, stops taking on more meat. Someone like that would be weird to society and not readily integrated therein. If they wore robes it might be easier for society to accept them.

The sangha is a stepping stone offering camaraderie as one lessens engagement with the socio-political world view prevalent at the time of a life. The sangha is kind of like a crutch or support mechanism for those ordained monastic.

I personally have doubts that monasticism is altogether good. The temptation is to an extent removed. It is easier to remain calm and detached when removed from the mundane “lunacy”. Celibacy can cause deviance; suppression can cause explosion.

The basic requirement to enter the stream is to see and acknowledge the truth of the Dharma, the impermanence of all conditioned things. Attaining and realising impermanence starts to untie attachment. “They” say that there is a maximum of seven lifetimes before nirvana once the stream has been entered.

The sixteen close disciples of Buddha are given arahant “status”. They are almost deified and their intervention sought via prayer. There are statues, painting and thangkas.

If they came to Siddartha as a fresh disciple when the Dharma was in infancy it seems to me that to go from zero to hero in such a short time and achieve arahant in one lifetime was some pretty fast work. Religious hagiography is often exaggerated and idealised. One could say through the power of the Buddha evolution was vastly accelerated.

There was no stream until Siddartha, in this context.

If I use the dreams in the blog as a basis I have had three Buddhist lifetimes, one Indian, one Thai and one Japanese. In all of these I was monastic. The next lifetime was as a Christian priest / soldier. The most recent prior lifetime I was a civilian. This current life started with science, a lot of it.

I have reason to believe that my first Buddhist life was at the dawn of Buddhism ~2500 years ago. If I entered the stream then I am now five lifetimes on. Which means I may not be doing an Arnie many more times.

Of course, the only way that I will know for sure is to pop my clogs and see what happens.

I’ll speculate that the human love of ritual and ceremony has lead to quasi-deification. The social need of groups is for some kind of celebratory focus or rite. This has little to do with what I understand to be the core teachings. In some texts removal or ritual is at a later stage of the enlightenment journey. It serves a good social purpose but must be transcended, being attached to ritual is an attachment after all.

My hunch is that the days of guru-yoga are drawing to a close. There have been many scandals and some far out cults.

Humanity might need to do more for and by itself.  

Dream Recall as a Metaphor for Past-life Recall.

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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Phowa is a tantric practice found in both Hinduism and Buddhism. It may be described as “transference of consciousness at the time of death”, “mind-stream transference”, “the practice of conscious dying”, or “enlightenment without meditation”. In Tibetan Buddhism phowa is one of the Six yogas of Naropa and also appears in many other lineages and systems of teaching.

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Tibetan Vajrayana Bon and Dzogchen inspired Buddhism is highly complex and rooted deep in tradition and lineage. It has an extensive death practice called Phowa in which one transfers consciousness, consciously, at the transition between corporeal and not. Timing is everything. Lamas and priests can enable others with ritual and there are publications like “The Tibetan Book of the Dead”. To an experimentalist like me these could be seen as recipes or syntheses to attempt in my body laboratory. One aspect is to hold a visual of pure white Amitabha Buddha for another being in transition.

A text might stimulate a memory recall of something done before.

It is common parlance to suggest memory from past lives. I’ll speculate that a lot of this is wishful thinking. Anecdotally many claim “famous” named prior incarnations. Ordinary people claim these. I’ll speculate that a non-ordinary or special being will incarnate in an even less ordinary vehicle next time around. There is a bit of dodgy logic with Joe Bloggs claiming Genghis Khan. Evolution is a planetary principle. Most people will have “normal” “humdrum” lives, over and over.

To develop a train of thought.

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If the consciousness leaves the body by sudden jolt or force or with the mental incapacity of age it is unlikely to remember the former abode. With jolt comes trauma which might overarch any memory.  To have sufficient control of mind to consciously withdraw requires a considerable degree of realisation and attainment, which is likely to be rare. Such beings able to exit smoothly and under control are more likely to retain memories of previous lives. They are lucid in the act of death, aware of event and conscious therein. They may have practised this across several lifetimes. They practise lucid dying.  So, if they set their intent on remembering a life learning, they do. Just as one learns to remember and recall dreams. Dream recall is a skill which can be developed. Metaphorically life recall may also be a skill which can be honed.

In this train of thought only the more highly skilled and practiced will have any decent recall. It is likely that they may be able to recall many lives. There will be a first time recall of life.

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From Wikipedia

Enumerations of special knowledges

In the Pali Canon, the higher knowledges are often enumerated in a group of six or of three types of knowledge.

The six types of higher knowledges (chalabhiññā) are:

  • “Higher powers” (iddhi-vidhā), such as walking on water and through walls.
  • “Divine ear” (dibba-sota), that is, clairaudience.
  • “Mind-penetrating knowledge” (ceto-pariya-ñāṇa), that is, telepathy.
  • “Remember one’s former abodes” (pubbe-nivāsanussati), causal memory, that is, recalling one’s own past lives.
  • “Divine eye” (dibba-cakkhu), that is, knowing others’ karmic destinations; and,
  • “Extinction of mental intoxicants” (āsavakkhaya), upon which arahantship follows.

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This suggests that past life recall is not a beginner’s skill.

To extend the metaphor just as one learns to remember and recall dreams night after night one starts to recall former abodes. The knowledge from which advises on karmic effort needed. In order to better recall one needs to die lucidly just as one needs to be lucid and aware of the enactment of the dreaming state of consciousness.

Each life is a new dream for the dreamer.

In the logic of reincarnation lucid dream recall is a metaphor for the putative recall of past life memories. It is internally consistent. The degree of lucidity and extent and detail of recall must vary.

If you start to remember your dreams better you might re-member previous lives.

Grizzly Adams – Twitter and LinkedIn

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

I have lived to a large extent in a vacuum of social interaction for a number of years. It was perhaps foretold by my like of “The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams”. As a teenager I really enjoyed the programme and the lifestyle idea, living in an isolated cabin in nature.  My extroverted parents kept bloody talking whilst I was watching the programmes and often commented about isolation leading inevitably to cabin fever. Although adjunct to society we do not really participate and cannot be said to be socially integrated. We are immersed in nature at the very edge of a village.

Because I have arthritis sooner or later, I will be unable to manage our 2 acres. So, I joined LinkedIn with a view to seeing if I could get some science editing work to help pay for assistance in the garden. That has not proved possible / easy. As a result of this LinkedIn exposure, I delved into the venture capital start-up world to which I once pertained a quarter century ago. It was interesting for me to track down people I did my first degree with and to see what they are / have been up to. When taking the integral over my life I have perhaps been among the least financially successful of all my peers. We live below minimum wage. This is not a usual outcome for a high technology start-up co-founder and an ex-academic from a world top ten university.

What I see is that the tendency to hype and spin has not gone. It has gotten worse. Many of my invitations to join my network have been ignored. People whose lives I helped change can’t be arsed with me anymore, my leper’s bell can be heard across continents, it seems. Some of these people are very “successful” now. I know that I have helped many people over the years. It seems they have forgotten or are embarrassed by me now. I am not resentful I have perhaps always given more that I have taken. It was never done transactionally.

By following the likes of people I knew, I have had exposure to a Jewish / Israeli perspective on some things. I found this interesting and had been unaware of some of the depth of feeling.

Obviously, LinkedIn has a sales / public relations purpose. It is not for deep spiritual insight. It could be said to be for people “on the make”.

Has anyone every studied if LinkedIn is worth the money time and effort? Or is LinkedIn yet another part of our modern FOMO addiction?

Twitter has some gems but it also has a lot of shite. There is darkness, hate and some light. I am amazed at how very polarised the world is now. I was trying to sum it up.

People it seems can be gullible, adamant and evangelical.

They may actually believe some of the stuff they soap box about. Conspiracy theories can be way out there. Deep thought and balance seems missing. OK not everyone likes Twitter/X or whatever. Not every “omniscient” being needs to spout off about their agenda. But it is a sample of our world today. I sense that the younger people are underrepresented. It does not fill me with optimism about where humanity is heading.

In a strange way I find both of these medias “intrusive” the world “out there” is somehow leaking in to they world here. The more I see they less I sense a belonging to that world. I don’t fit in, perhaps I never have.

My working hypothesis is that there is not really much more for me to do “out there”.  I am done, used up. I have had a dream recently suggesting that this self-image may be wrong and that my opinion of self needs a polish, a glow up. But true paths can and may be filled with emptiness as opposed to societal detritus.

It seems likely that in the upcoming weeks I will pull the plug on LinkedIn and now that my research on Twitter is nearly over, I will stop using that too.

I have one observation Twitter live feed is way better before the USA gets out of bed. Reiteration differs from fact. Boring.

Can Dreams Comment on Waking “Realities”?

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Of late I have had a number of dreams concerning people who are named and who could, with a little bit of on line detective work, be found and identified from the dream. I have a LinkedIn page with a CV. It would not be rocket science.

I have not published these dreams nor will I. I haven’t met these individuals in well over a decade and am not chuntering about them in my waking consciousness.  It feels were I to publish them I would be in an odd way infringing privacy.

Quite why they are tipping up in dreams I do not know for sure.

I have a pet theory / notion that these dreams refer to some kind of karma which has not been worked off or even worked on by the individuals concerned.

I am sitting here miles away just doing my hermit-garden thing and ta-da they crop up in my dreams. One could go all Germanic and say that my sub-conscious is leaking these through into my dreaming consciousness.

The feeling associated with these dreams is that something is kicking off for the subjects and in some bizarre way it pertains however weakly to their interactions with me, past and/or present.

I get no pleasure from seeing dark tendrils above the heads of people I once knew. It causes some concern.

People believe in karma as a figure of speech, some as a principle but few take it seriously enough not to do stuff which they want yet know to be off or wrong. They pay lip service to karma and when the karmic boomerang comes, they write it off as coincidence.

I have had numerous ginormous mess dreams pertaining largely to two groups of people. I interpret this as there being a huge karmic mess with unresolved challenges and unresolved situations. In these dreams it is clear that these messes are not of my making nor is it for me to clean them up.

I’ll wager if I told any of these individuals of this interpretation, they would deny there is a mess and not believe my interpretation of a karmic shit pile.

If karma is real and you don’t believe in it, then that is your karma and you will bear the karmic consequences. This is one version of a waking “reality”.

If there is no such thing as cause and effect, karma, then no worries. You can do whatever it is you want without consequence, pretty much.

I have had a number of dreams which corelate with subsequent life events. I am not saying they herald live events. They corelate. I am aware that the dream could cause a confirmation bias. I interpret events in the light of the dream; therefore, no correlation exists I am just wish fulfilling.

I am not a complete wanker nor space cadet. With a fair confidence on my part dreams, at least my dreams and those of the wife, can comment on contemporary and subsequent physical plane events.

This is in part because we share an Easterly predilection, primary for her and secondary for me. In one context we are stalkers of time.

I have a feeling that something is approaching, a big pivot point and that the pivot is timing with / to the equinox. That feeling is not to the day accurate in time. I made a prediction based on no physical plane evidence, simply intuition and dreams.

We shall see. If it does, I can refer back to this dated post.

Fukawi

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

I have just turned 60 and the wife has just had an operation to remove a small cancer in her breast. There is some suggestion of active Myeloma sites in her skeleton and she has had a blood test and there will be a new PET scan end of November.

My dreams have pointed again at shenanigans in the SW7 posse.

They have also indicated some measure of darkness.

The human puzzle dream still seems active. I will not be believed.

Again, there is also much indication of the unknown. This is a bit rum because our life circumstance here in the compound is very much known.

The only external interaction is LinkedIn, this blog and Substack. The latter two have near zero read /visit stats.

I started the LinkedIn trial with a view to getting some science edit work to help pay for gardening assistance. Looks to be a dead end. The chronic long term problem of me ceasing to be able to do all the work remains unsolved.

It is clear from LinkedIn that a majority of my peer group(s) have had long and successful careers. Me not. We do not earn enough pension to have to pay tax and it is significantly less than the 35 hour minimum wage rate.

I have had a dream about a dead end too. In that dream I pick up a car and twirl it through 180 degrees to head even further into the unknown. It is not my car, however.

We shall find out in a couple of weeks what the cancer follow up protocol is.

I am thinking about ending the LinkedIn account and perhaps buying a different domain name to use with this WordPress account.

To my satisfaction I have a working explanation as to what the various dream themes are and represent.

Nobody wanted to buy my patent or even inquired. This suggests that there is little point in trying to make a new application, though I might for fun still look at a new quantum modality.

I sense that people remain wary about interacting with me. I don’t know what about a retired 60 year old man living like a hermit makes people wary.

My best guess is we are in more of the same. Namely a bit of gardening, the odd trip up to the coast now the holiday season has quietened down and a smattering of medical appointments.   

That is about where the Fukawi…

The Problem of Out of the Box Thinking

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Of late I have stopped looking at Twitter because there is an awful lot of stuff about the upcoming American presidential election. It does not speak well of the level of intelligence. It remains a mystery to me why/how such a technologically advanced society can have some very backward thinking, which is adamant and dogmatic.

Because I was “forced” to be right handed my school career got off to a bad start. I was forever being deducted marks for poor hand writing and shite diagrams. I chose not to study biology in six form because I was always losing marks for poor diagrams. I use a bow and arrow left-handed and I set up the food mixer “gammy” according to the wife.

Human beings can hold seemingly contradictory ideas at the same time without it causing them problems. For example, it is OK to bomb Gaza to smithereens killing thousands but to abort a foetus is forbidden / evil.  People believe the standard model of physics and yet still talk of heaven up there and hell down there. The concept of getting virgins as a reward for martyrdom is inconsistent with not having a body or penis when dead. People refer to heaven as a “place” but without physical form Cartesian notions of space are invalid. How would a discarnate consciousness be even aware of space with no eyes, no ears and in the absence of a heartbeat there would be no clock to provide time. Time and space would no longer exist.

Apparently, there is more in the universe which we don’t know than we do.

“In the standard lambda-CDM model of cosmology, the mass–energy content of the universe is 5% ordinary matter, 26.8% dark matter, and 68.2% a form of energy known as dark energy. Thus, dark matter constitutes 85% of the total mass, while dark energy and dark matter constitute 95% of the total mass–energy content.”

Yet people can be very adamant and assertive.

History shows that scientific models evolve and change. We tend to keep the old models and then add exception or special cases until using the old model is like flogging a dead horse. New out of the box ideas are nearly always seen as whacky at the get-go. This can lead to reputational loss and peer group shunning.

The phenomenon of quantum entanglement and its resolution with at distance effects on the other half of an entangled pair was a non sequitur for Einstein. We choose to describe the physics by calling two eigenstates entangled. It works for our purposes and has practical application. There is a part of me which wonders if we are missing something, if there is an underlying physics we are not yet aware of.  Will the people a century from now look back at our naivety? We teach wave particle duality but the electron does not give a toss how we describe things. We forget that our descriptions and models are just that. They are only so good as they are useful yet people are evangelical about them.

Logically there is a physics problem with heaven and hells. Where are they? Are they off planet, in a parallel universe, down the back of a sofa? What exactly goes there? It cannot be corporeal.

People can tend not to ask such questions. They can be seen as heretical.

A fair swathe of humanity believe in some form of “life” after death, which seems illogical from a reductionist point of view. Nobody has every proven life after death; therefore all “scientists” will tend towards atheism and life ends period. Yet there are many scientists of faith.

I personally have circumstantial dream evidence which points at reincarnation. I can say this in public because it no longer can affect my career prospects.

Modern science can be said to apply to the manifest universe. Religion suggests something non-manifest as we know it in the common view of the world. If using our current thinking we don’t know what 95% of the energy-mass of the manifest universe is, how can we be sure what is not manifest?

There is a big hole in our understanding.

In meditation I have opened the Sahasrāra chakra using visualisation and, in a stepwise manner visualized my awareness and consciousness outside my body. I did this by stretching the Sutratma and Antahkarana over a number of months. This was thinking out of the box so to speak. There was very little residual corporeal awareness “there”. According to some theories this is what happens at death. In that tradition this is a death practice.

I can in no way prove that I took my awareness out. I could have been kidding myself. I did also have a visual of looking down at me on the operating table during my colon cancer surgery. If I had to place a bet. Some kind of non-corporeal awareness can exist. I’ll find out for sure, soon enough.

People are allowed to think outside the societal box but they must not stray too far from the accepted reality box. If they think outside accepted paradigm, they risk excommunication. Another human being (priest) can by using a spell (rite) stop them from going to a place which nobody knows where it is and from which no one has come back bearing tales.

Anything truly original and avantgarde is very risky in socio-political terms.

Thinking outside the box close, just a tad outside the box, is allowed.

Trans-paradigmatic thinking is forbidden.