Impermanence – Cop Out or Motivation?

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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The trouble is you think you have time...

Siddhartha Gautama

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I have paraphrased here something I read in the Dhammapada. In this the notion that there is always tomorrow or mañana and demain is hinted at. People can put things off over and over. This especially  true of anything which is inconvenient. Even though they know that they need to address something they put it off. People can justify inaction to themselves rather than put themselves out or do something positive perhaps transformative. The safety of the unpleasant status quo of life is so tempting; the inertia of sameness is like a duvet. The fear of risk forbids any reward for courage.

It is evident that life is impermanent. Everyone without exception dies. Which means that allotted time is finite.

It is easy to fall into the trap of “hey man all is impermanent” and use that as a cop out for not doing anything. If nothing lasts, nothing matters, so why bother? If  all of life is an illusion then why interact, why take part?

It is easy to take an overly passive view on karma. If everything is pre-ordained and fated because of past actions why try to ameliorate? That is a gist of karma. At some stage you have to interact in a meaningful way to work with your karma and acquire karmic merit. You have to learn the lessons that karma has in store and which you have selected for yourself by your actions. Karma is there to teach. You need to learn your lessons otherwise you repeat your folly ad infinitum.

Impermanence teaches that you have little or no time in which to act and yet you must not be obsessed about result or outcome because these are not permanent or real.

It is easy to get the balance wrong and be overly dismissive and fatalistic or to try to force things to fit how you want them to be and thereby create more karma. If you put things off you are deciding so to do. Procrastination cannot work on karma.

You have no time, much less leisure than you imagine, so get busy but do so without obsession or desire for guarantee. Impermanence teaches that all forms of obsession are folly. It also teaches that you have little time to figure out what it is you need to learn and then to seek out those lessons.

In any given life, time is not a luxury which one in reality has.

Copping out because things are impermanent is copping out, it is a form or “reasoned” and “excused” inertia and avoidance.

Whereas impermanence might encourage you not to waste a single second of your allotted time.

Working with impermanence as a fact to acquire skill and discernment is a very profound and meaningful practice.

Impermanece teaches balance and the middle way.

Geocentrism and Perception

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For many centuries the powers that be and the so-called wise held a view that the heavens rotated around the centre of the universe, aka Earth. Looking out from Earth it was assumed that we were the very epicentre of all God’s creation. This understanding has been proven wrong by the use of modern electromagnetic astronomy. Yet people were adamant that the world revolved around them and any disagreement in public could be fatal, a taboo punishable by excommunication, shunning and execution.

This innate human tendency towards self-diagnosed omniscience persists to this day in various forms.

One could postulate that a self-centred world view is very common. This holds for institutions and individuals. Moreover a kind of gravitational attraction is assumed. Say for example you were a Harvard or an Oxford university you might assume that would be scholars of merit would be irrevocably attracted to you, both to share in your divine reputation and the chance to participate in highbrow scholarly intercourse. People see things from their own point of view. To some a “Hogwarts” school dinners form of collegiate catering may be attractive to others it is not.

Those with power and reputation might assume that this is attractive to others and these exert a quasi-gravitational pull. Moths are drawn to the candle flame. Seen from the inside one sees an attractiveness which externally may not hold. A self-centred perception may lack accuracy.

I have seen some of the mythos associated with a university I worked at briefly. It was held in high regard by some less so by me. My perception was based upon experience and not PR or mythos.

Some people are very corporate in their thinking. Imagining that some corporate or institutional identity is attractive. I once went to an Accenture “do” while I was a start-up founder with a lot of dosh in the bank. All the young guns were full of themselves and very Accenture on-board. All they could see were the internecine pecking order, rankings and power struggles. They knew best. They did not leave a good impression on me. I thought that they were a bunch of wankers. These ambassadors for Accenture left me thinking that the organisation was full of bellends. I wanted no more to do with it ever.

When you are caught up in an institution, church or cult it is very easy to become enamoured and imagine oneself the best thing since sliced bread. The group perception internally may differ significantly from that held externally.  For example other Buddhist groups may think that the Dzogchen and Bon influenced Tibetan Buddhism is bad for Buddhism as a whole. Although the Dalai Lama is arguably the most famous Buddhist one might question as to the type of being this attracts towards Buddhism. The difference between high Tibetan ritual and Thai Forest simplicity is marked. There is a cultural agenda in Tibetan Buddhism which extends past sutra and towards a national historical identity. I don’t know to what extent reflection is made. Evangelism of any kind suggests an imagined innate superiority of world view which must be shared with others. A similar story might hold for STEM advocacy in schools. Everyone must be blessed by the all-encompassing wisdom of the STEM doctrine and creed. All hail the standard model. Blessed be its name.

When you are within the encircled wagons out on the wild prairie armed with your trusty Winchester rifles, it is easier to kill the Apache. After all he is the ignorant savage and you are the God fearing pioneer enacting justified ethnic cleansing in the name of the Lord. It is your divine right to drive the indigenous off their lands. They need your conversion to go to heaven.

Humans can believe whatever it is convenient for them to believe and their ability to seemingly justify slaughter and murder to themselves continues unabated to this day.

When you look in a geocentric, self-centred  manner anything out there is an enemy to be conquered and slain. They must revolve around you or die.

Mathematically whether that be with spherical or cartesian coordinates perception starts at the origin, the self, which is placed at the centre of the world, the centre of the known universe. Many imagine that the entirety of creation revolves around them, their wants, their needs and their petty grudges and complaints.

Although historically Geocentrism has been determined to be inaccurate, a poor model of reality, many fail to see that their whole view is self-centred. Me-centrism. They fail to see that they too are old fashioned and archaic in their notions of world. This observation applies to even the most intelligent amongst us. Intelligence can confer a sense of entitled arrogance. Those on Olympus after all, know what is best for us plebs.

Many people whose perception is very self-centred imagine that it is right and dandy that this should be the case.

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Does the entire universe revolve around you, are you the very centre of all creation?

Are you the flame to which all moths are irresistibly drawn by your magnificence?

Planning for 2026…

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

John Lennon

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Now that the enforced lunacy of the holiday season is over it is time to look forward to what to do in 2026.

I have just finished a plumbing job which I did not start before my operation. It was not complex. But like so many other things here legacy “solutions” can cause other problems. I have learned not to start “apparently” easy jobs when there might be a time constraint.

It is fair to say that one person’s bodge or short cut can evolve into another’s prolonged and frustrating nightmare when they try to clean up the mess and otherwise sort out the magnificent and “time saving” bodge job / cunning plan / clever work around.

I have now restarted the post-op DIY.

There are two pretty major things upcoming. Our application to be allowed to remain in France is one. If this is denied then our healthcare rights will probably cease. I would have to pay full whack for a second replacement hip even if I could get it done before I am booted out. It is up to the French government to decide if I am allowed to stay. It is not a given.

The second obvious one is if they think it is a good idea to proceed with my second hip replacement or not. I am guessing that this cannot happen before spring but might be possible soon after. We shall discuss this next week. I think I would prefer to get it done sooner rather than later.

We do need to downsize house. The outcomes of the above inform the decision about putting the house on the market.

I’ll speculate that I can do more DIY more easily than in Autumn last year. So we can tart the house up a bit.

We have made a provisional list of DIY and garden jobs. As spring kicks in stuff grows fast here.

I have two minor decisions.

Do I renew the blog plan or bin it and start a new one?

Do I renew by quantum optics patent, due May? I am not planning on trying to commercialise it. A renewal would cost the same as a couple of week’s grocery shop. It is moot.

It seems to me that the dreaming is quietening down.

All compounded things are like a dream, a phantom, a bubble or a reflection…

Best guess is that all the highfalutin stuff will fade away blown on a passing wind.

I am planning for a year with gardening and DIY and maybe another operation. I am setting my intent in that general direction. If we are due to get kicked out we will have to put the house on the market. I am / we are deciding what to do with the year.

It is not very complicated really…

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Curiosity Not Power

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I had a bit of a tough time with some hip pain during the night. I still can’t lie on the operation-scar side for more than a few minutes. But during the night I must have rolled over onto it and I awoke with some considerable pain. I could have taken some codeine and gotten up for shite TV. Instead I tried to ride it out. Which gave time for consideration.

I have a working assumption that my residual fate for this life encompasses not a lot more than gardening, DIY and a couple of hobby blogs. There remains little more significant for me to do. What I am interested in, is not an interest shared by many. It is largely curiosity driven on my part. There is no pecuniary worth.

Reflecting back one of the drivers for me has been the question, “is this possible?”. Once I have answered this question at gist level I am usually done, satisfied. I then get a little bored until the next curiosity arrives. I am certainly more interested in looking into things rather than applying them. Once I learned how the research grant application game worked and even managed to get a few quid, it was no longer as interesting for me. I was not motivated by peer approval. Yes at one stage it was a part of my job. I did not burn with passion and drive. I did not want to be boss nor some big cheese. I did have to adopt a defensive posture of sorts. I was not interested in fame.

From time to time I have found myself in situations where others may have deemed me to have some power, positional or by association. I was not interested in exerting that power certainly in a power over sense. I did not ever want minions. I was not ambitious about career advancement and could not really be arsed to apply for promotion.

Retrospect suggests that this orientation was ill suited to societal expectations. People did compete with me for power in some situations. They appeared to want something more than I. I never really got this drive nor was I overly anxious about protecting my “position”.

I guess basically I have not felt that gut wrenching insecurity which others appear to have nor have I sought to remedy it by some kind of external verification of validation. Peer related kudos is not important to me. I don’t need a tick or a gold star from teacher.

The most enjoyable part of doing a start-up was writing the business plan and then pitching it to see if it got funded. It did. It would probably have been better to simply stop the process there. Instead a company was formed etc. The proof of principle was done. In principle it was {is} possible to dream up a business plan and get it funded. It would have saved everybody a lot of hassle if it stopped there with no money changing hands. It would not however have put dinner on the table in 50 households.

In many of my explorations I am happy when I feel that I have the gist of it. There is no need to delve deeper into detail. A rough understanding of overall gist suffices. Once I have that I get a bit bored and repetition does not enthral.

So much is driven by an initial curiosity which can be quite quickly sated. The level of curiosity these days is rather muted. Perhaps I am jaded.

I have a notion that because people are fascinated by power and maybe lack power themselves they imagine that others are power hungry. This obsession with pecking order and power drives many behaviours. It is impossible to convince people obsessed thus, that it is not a major motivator for me. There are many people who are disinterested in power, they however may be disappointed in those who wield power. Many people want so badly to be big cheeses in some arena or other…

Yup where I got to in the wee small hours was that curiosity is more of a driver for me and that gist usually suffices…

Gateway to the Nagual’s World – South the place of Dreaming

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In my case, don Juan wanted an omen before he taught me the ritual. That omen came when don Juan and I were driving through a border town in Arizona and a policeman stopped me. The policeman thought I was an illegal alien. Only after I had shown him my passport, which he suspected of being a forgery, and other documents, did he let me go. Don Juan had been in the front seat next to me all the time, and the policeman had not given him a second glance. He had focused solely on me. Don Juan thought the incident was the omen he was waiting for.

His interpretation of it was that it would be very dangerous for me to call attention to myself, and he concluded that my world had to be one of utter simplicity and candor – elaborate ritual and pomp were out of character for me. He conceded, however, that a minimal observance of ritualistic patterns was in order when I made my acquaintance with his warriors. I had to begin by approaching them from the south, because that is the direction that power follows in its ceaseless flux. Life force flows to us from the south, and leaves us flowing toward the north. He said that the only opening to a Nagual’s world was through the south, and that the gate was made by two female warriors, who would have to greet me and would let me go through if they so decided.

He took me to a town in central Mexico, to a house in the countryside. As we approached it on foot from a southerly direction, I saw two massive Indian women standing four feet apart, facing each other. They were about thirty or forty feet away from the main door of the house, in an area where the dirt was hard-packed. The two women were extraordinarily muscular and stern. Both had long, jet-black hair held together in a single thick braid. They looked like sisters. They were about the same height and weight – I figured that they must have been around five feet four, and weighed 150 pounds. One of them was extremely dark, almost black, the other much lighter. They were dressed like typical Indian women from central Mexico – long, full dresses and shawls, homemade sandals.

Don Juan made me stop three feet from them. He turned to the woman on our left and made me face her. He said that her name was Cecilia and that she was a dreamer. He then turned abruptly, without giving me time to say anything, and made me face the darker woman, to our right. He said that her name was Delia and that she was a stalker. The women nodded at me. They did not smile or move to shake hands with me, or make any gesture of welcome. Don Juan walked between them as if they were two columns marking a gate. He took a couple of steps and turned as if waiting for the women to invite me to go through. The women stared at me calmly for a moment. Then Cecilia asked me to come in, as if I were at the threshold of an actual door.

Don Juan led the way to the house. At the front door we found a man. He was very slender. At first sight he looked extremely young, but on closer examination he appeared to be in his late fifties. He gave me the impression of being an old child: small, wiry, with penetrating dark eyes. He was like an elfish apparition, a shadow. Don Juan introduced him to me as Emilito, and said that he was his courier and all-around helper, who would welcome me on his behalf.

It seemed to me that Emilito was indeed the most appropriate being to welcome anyone. His smile was radiant; his small teeth were perfectly even. He shook hands with me, or rather he crossed his forearms and clasped both my hands. He seemed to be exuding enjoyment; anyone would have sworn that he was ecstatic in meeting me. His voice was very soft and his eyes sparkled.

We walked into a large room. There was another woman there. Don Juan said that her name was Teresa and that she was Cecilia’s and Delia’s courier. She was perhaps in her early thirties, and she definitely looked like Cecilia’s daughter. She was very quiet but very friendly. We followed don Juan to the back of the house, where there was a roofed porch.

It was a warm day. We sat there around a table, and after a frugal dinner we talked until after midnight. Emilito was the host. He charmed and delighted everyone with his exotic stories. The women opened up. They were a great audience for him. To hear the women’s laughter was an exquisite pleasure. They were tremendously muscular, bold, and physical. At one point, when Emilito said that Cecilia and Delia were like two mothers to him, and Teresa like a daughter, they picked him up and tossed him in the air like a child.

Of the two women, Delia seemed the more rational, down- to-earth. Cecilia was perhaps more aloof, but appeared to have greater inner strength. She gave me the impression of being more intolerant, or more impatient; she seemed to get annoyed with some of Emilito’s stories. Nonetheless, she was definitely on the edge of her chair when he would tell what he called his “tales of eternity.” He would preface every story with the phrase, ‘Do you, dear friends, know that. . . ?’

The story that impressed me most was about some creatures that he said existed in the universe, who were the closest thing to human beings without being human; creatures who were obsessed with movement and capable of detecting the slightest fluctuation inside themselves or around them. These creatures were so sensitive to motion that it was a curse to them. It gave them such pain that their ultimate ambition was to find quietude. Emilito would intersperse his tales of eternity with the most outrageous dirty jokes. Because of his incredible gifts as a raconteur, I understood every one of his stories as a metaphor, a parable, with which he was teaching us something.

 Don Juan said that Emilito was merely reporting about things he had witnessed in his journeys through eternity. The role of a courier was to travel ahead of the Nagual, like a scout in a military operation. Emilito went to the limits of the second attention, and whatever he witnessed he passed on to the others.

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From “The Eagle’s Gift” by Carlos Castaneda, Part Three.

  • The gate to our property is in the South. Currently there is a beat up Citroen there…

Third Omen – Not Coincidence…Dreaming Symbol

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Last night just after dusk around 18:30 there was a large thud and a bang.  In the drive there was a small silver Citroen facing horizontally across. The car had hit the crash barrier and spun skidding over the verge and dropping about 1.5 metres THUD into our drive. The car was facing the steep slope and must have gone over the edge backwards. There was an animated young woman with dark hair and glasses talking to her mother on the ‘phone. She had a major fright.

It was getting a bit icy.

This is the third crash directly outside our property in a tad over six weeks!!

The odds on this are not likely.

It gets safer to conclude that this is NO coincidence.

She was unharmed and the air bags had failed to deploy. After a while her mother and another woman turned up. She was able to manoeuvre the car down the drive and onto some hard standing grass. It is there now iced up. Someone will come and pick up the abandoned car which is at least partially functional later today.

The sloping drive will be ice-rink-slippy until midday.

Three times now somebody else’s vehicle, state of awareness, has crashed outside our house, our view of the world.

This as dreaming symbols is suggesting that for person or persons unknown to us, their awareness, the way they perceive and align the word, has come to a sudden halt and crashed. Outside and near our house.

It was a bit of a car crash…

As the saying goes…

Is Knowledge Important ?

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“ The knowledge economy, or knowledge-based economy, is an economic system in which the production of goods and services is primarily driven by knowledge-intensive activities that contribute to the advancement of technical and scientific innovation. The key element of value in this paradigm lies in the increased reliance on human capital and intellectual property as primary sources of innovative ideas, information, and practices. Organizations are called upon to leverage this “knowledge” in their production processes to stimulate and consolidate their business development. This approach is characterized by reduced dependence on physical inputs and natural resources. A knowledge-based economy is founded on the crucial role of intangible assets within organisations as an enabler of modern economic growth.”

Excerpted from Wikipedia

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There are various schools of thought which suggest that in modern times knowledge is a key factor in economic success. That knowledge must be commercially exploitable and can include skills and artisanal know-how. As recent world events suggest, access to natural resources remains of high geo-political importance. Venezuelan oil being an obvious marker.

In my view this schematic is a tad idealistic, it does not mention socio-political barriers and vested interests. One might say that recent changes in US policy have moved away from the notion of a knowledge economy back towards gun boat aircraft carrier diplomacy.

Just like AI has been shown to hallucinate it is a moot point as to whether the so-called AI investment boom is also a group or herd like hallucination among humans. FOMO investments can have bubble-bursts.

The knowledge which has pecuniary value relates only to profit. There is little attention paid to altruistic knowledge. To live only for profit and gain is unbalanced. In the eyes of some there may be more to life and living than that. Not everyone agrees.

One could argue that I am an example of how the so-called knowledge economy failed to make use of a resource. It failed. I failed. Either way I am now retired and doing gardening and DIY.

“You lose what you do not use.”

Is an axiom which has perhaps wide applicability. Knowledge which is not applied and practised can no longer be recalled. The edge of its blade becomes blunted by rust. Slowly like an untended path in the woods it becomes overgrown, deserted and before long nobody remembers that it is there or ever was there. As an older person I have seen how scientific knowledge from many decades ago has to be reinvented because people cannot find it so easily in online search engines. Because search engines are now biased to the fee paying advertiser, much knowledge is now lost in far flung unvisited corners of the internet, there to gather spiders and webs.

It is reasonable to assume that whatever knowledge I may have will die with me. That may not be a great loss but it is an example, of how people may talk a good game. But when push comes to shove knowledge is rarely as important as self-promotion. There is nobody queuing up to learn from me. And by now I am too hermit-like to converse.

There is a danger that human evolution, despite all the advances in technology, is taking a backward step towards a new dark age. An age where image and sound-byte becomes a new Goebbels-reality. An age where short snappy mind numbing mantra replace thought and consideration. An age in which metrics and graphs bury substance and worth in cold clammy tombs. Bullet point thinking is not knowledge and not wisdom.

I think popularity and fame have removed knowledge and wisdom from the mantelpiece above our hearths. Shiny, flashy and chav dominate; viral despite COVID remains a term indicative of success.

It may seem strange but I think that the pool of available knowledge is actually shrinking, it is becoming more standardised and subject to peer approval. Loss of diversity is generally bad for ecosystem; it is an indicator of environmental decline.

I think that genuine knowledge is becoming much less important than claimed or asserted knowledge. The tendency is away from the unfathomable and profound towards the safety of the shallows and the common. I suspect that reputation has become more important than knowledge.

Once diversity has been lost it is very hard to replace. Same is not often best. Clone-think tends to be counter-evolutionary.

Once knowledge has been lost it is not easily restored. Value for money seems to be the main arbiter of which knowledge survives and is nurtured. There is a very short term outlook.

Sometimes we are so stubborn, adamant and omniscient that we can only learn through loss.

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“Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish been caught, and the last stream poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money.”

Native American Proverb

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My Death – pārasaṃgate – Phowa – Dream 04-01-2026

~ quantumdreamer ~ 1 Comment

Here is this morning’s dream / vision which started around 5 AM and which persisted and replayed many times after that. It is now an “event” which I can hold and “visit”.

The dream starts with an elevated view looking down on a man in a magenta monastic sleeveless tunic with his hands held in his lap. They are in partial mudra. He is sat on a carpeted floor loosely cross legged with back leaning against a bench or sofa for support. He has a light faded plumb coloured blanket over his shoulders which has an inlaid fine embroidered pattern. I know him to be dead and my erstwhile body.

The scene changes to before. I am sat up in a hospital bead with a painted white metal frame. I am in a nursing home or hospital like facility. I call a nurse to me. I say that I think it is time and could she bring be my blanket and the cat. I am helped out of bed and down the corridor to a “sitting room”. I sit on the floor with my back against a bench. On each side are cloth privacy medical screens on metal frames with wheels. They are light blue-light green in colour. I am shielded from view. People in the corridor cannot see me. A mid-sized oxygen cylinder is brought and laid horizontally on the floor. A small clear plastic tube runs from the cylinder and is looped once around my head. There are two small outlet tubes which are fitted to my nostrils. The gas is flowing. I can see that the pressure regulator on the cylinder is tending towards empty. It is not yet in the red. The orderlies are not concerned because I will probably die before it runs out. I make myself comfortable on the floor and my grey cat is brought to me. She is very much like Bowie the stray cat we “rescued” here. I am given the cat and she sits briefly on my lap. I stroke her and she nuzzles. She then wanders off. Two attendants come with my blanket which they put around my shoulders.

I adopt the infinity mudra in which the thumb and middle finger of each hand are touching each other and the two rings so formed are intertwined to form an infinity or 8 sign. As I do this in the dream I can feel the “chakras” in the palms of my hands and feet instantly energised while I am sleeping in “real” life. It is “electrifying”.

I start to chant quietly to myself in the dream.

“gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā”

Slowly this changes to deep voice. I then focus on my crown or sahasrāra chakra which I “unscrew” to open it in readiness. I am making the way clear for me to go beyond form.

The scene changes to several weeks ago in the dream. I know we are last century. I am in the hospital bed and discussing with two white young male doctors. I am explaining to them that I need to make preparations for my death, my passing over. They are unconvinced that such thigs are necessary. Medical science does not believe in them. I suggest that there may be some things that medical science does not yet know and ask that they please humour a dying man. What I am asking is harmless and will not upset the running of the facility. One of the doctors says that he still does not believe me. I say that we shall see because I know that the time is approaching soon. We will find out. Not today but soon. They agree to help out.

I am now sat back down on the floor. I can feel that my face has been recently shaved and that I have bathed. I feel clean. My hair is still in a buzz cut growing out, a few millimetres long. I focus again on the sahasrāra and continue to chant lightly slowing fading this out. I can feel a first wisp beyond my body. The view shifts so that I am sat observing the body as if in a mirror. We are close a few feet apart. Slowly out of my crown a golden-yellow cloud of mist rises up and swells out. Like a murmuration of sorts. In amongst it I can see flecks of shining gold which catch the light and there are deep flecks of indigo-blue near glass-like threads and like tiny shiny fish scales. The cloud is filled with tiny sparkly mirrors glistening in the unusual supernatural light. The cloud moves slowly and expands.  I look down to the hands. I can see them and feel them. At the moment the cloud is still anchored in the body. The right hand opens the finger-thumb mudra to break the infinity seal and the cloud detaches from the body. The head previously upright lolls slightly forward in what I know to be my physical death.

I look at the cloud for a while and then my consciousness merges with it, into it. I am liberated of body. I wait in the room for a while and then it is gone from view.

I wake knowing that I have seen a death of mine. Over the next few hours the scene replays. I know that I died consciously in this dream and vision. I know that I had prepared and that it had mostly gone according to plan..