attain impermanence

It is the middle of February and the long range weather forecast suggests that the month may end with a warmer Southerly wind. This means that we have probably survived another winter. How many more we have left, is moot.

I have organised my dreams in this blog and am happy that there is not much more to be done with them. The web stats suggest that this is my least read blog ever. I have made no effort to promote it or optimise SEO because dreams are not about force and anyone floating by like a cloud, is welcome.

There are around 200,000 words here with ~ 250 posts and a total of 600 registered views {non France}.

It is possible that people read content without the stats monitoring it. There is no way to quantify this. Based on evidence very few are interested. I am not surprised; people have way more important things.

The plan for the site renews in May and I have a mind to do some spring cleaning, to wipe the slate perhaps. The reads for my Substack are also very low. Maybe a fresh start?

I am perhaps due a big operation sometime in 2025, perhaps not.

I have been getting some big dreams of late which bear no commonality with my day to day life. The wife even had one thematically linked too.

If we were to sell the house to down size to a nanna-flat or bungalow, spring summer looks to be the time to start. We have had all the diagnostics done.

I am far from the normal mundane currents of life, a little eddy in a backwater. It is very unlikely that this will change. Although the universe has curve balls, I am not even at the batting home plate, should it seek to pitch. Any incoming is probably going to be health related.

In a sense these dreams are an insubstantial pageant which bears little tangibility to the life quotidian. They prove nothing though hint at more. Maybe they are tendrils from a far off land, a far off place, a time that never was, ghost echoes in the web of life, an unmanifest potential not even nearing a threshold. Perhaps a faintly traced charcoal sketch of karmic comedy and tragedy writ filagree on rice paper.

Impermanence is not attained by many, they take so very much for granted.

Maybe that time is again at hand.

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PROSPERO, to Ferdinand

You do look, my son, in a moved sort,
As if you were dismayed. Be cheerful, sir.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Sir, I am vexed.

Bear with my weakness. My old brain is troubled.
Be not disturbed with my infirmity.
If you be pleased, retire into my cell
And there repose.

A turn or two I’ll walk
To still my beating mind.

The Tempest – Act 4, scene 1 William Shakespeare

I have had eight decent length dreams in October so far this year. I haven’t published them because recognisable individuals are in them. These are out of the blue as I haven’t spoken to/with them for well over a decade. I don’t really know what to make of them. They may be pointing at something going on in the “real” world.

In the Toltec tradition the “place” of dreams is the South. I spent quite a bit of my early life in the Southern Hemisphere and can get on well with Kiwis, Aussies and South Africans. I was a part of the itinerant barman subculture in London for a number of years. In the Toltec tradition people have a predilection for stalking of dreaming. I am the latter. Dreams can re-present possibilities in the web of life, a kind of aperture in space-time where events might manifest. These apertures do not stay open forever. They close and what once might have been possible ceases to be. Failure to act on the appropriate time scale makes things no longer possible.

I’ll make a statement, there is a tendency for arrogant people to be complacent and get caught napping.

One could argue we have seen this take place recently in the middle east, at 9/11 and Pearl Harbour. People who think themselves invulnerable, important and powerful can get surprises.

Impermanence as a concept is logical, nothing lasts forever. But people do not get it. To truly attain impermanence is to understand the eternal now. Impermanence lessens the manacles of clinging and attachment; it exemplifies the preciousness of time. Many imagine they have all the time in the world and are slow to get around to things which they prefer not to do. Timely action delayed reduces likelihood of positive outcome. Impermanence teaches appreciation and the fact we only borrow things for at most a lifetime.

People who work in universities need to be seen and heard in order to get promoted. They need to have measures of esteem; they need a web presence and various public metrics. They have a semi-permanent web footprint. Several ex-students of mine have commented to me that I am now hard to find on the internet. I was on Research Gate. They won’t give me an account now. I was on LinkedIn. I have no need to be seen, to be present. So, I can build up a profile, write a blog and then bin it. They are impermanent things. I do not cling; I have back-ups of text on the off chance I might need it again. People can imagine that one will want to remain in touch and contactable. They may be complacent about this. The nature of academia is that it is a large heavy slow moving object with momentum, it is not fluid nor are research funding mechanisms, the turn around time is quarterly at best. There are institutional and annual rhythms. If one is institutionalised life dances {slowly} to that beat. There is assumed a quasi-permanence.

It is perhaps non-standard to suggest that attainment of impermanence gives one a sense of urgency at the same time as detachment from outcome, specifically desired outcome. The land of “there is always tomorrow” runs out. The world of mañana means possibility and opportunity lost.

Carpe diem is interred in a mausoleum.

There is a saying attributed to Buddha; “The trouble is you think you have time.”

People spend their time unwisely and there is a lot of wasted time, escapism and avoidance. Complacency about time is brought about by the illusion of permanence. “It will always be there tomorrow.”

There is vast global complacency about climate change because of the illusion of permanence. People do not get that our mode of living is subject to change and over the next decade it will become obvious. Instead of cooperating to reduce consumption the mantra of economic growth underpins jaded economic dogma. People indulge in petty vengeance games where hundreds of thousands of tonnes of high explosive munitions are detonated to get revenge by obliteration. How much energy and carbon dioxide has been released in Gaza, in Ukraine?

Has that cooled the climate?

I suspect that humanity could well be on its way to being shaken violently out of its complacency as the weather patterns get ever more extreme and chaotic. Humanity, especially in the rapacious West, has taken so very much for granted and for a long time.

Pride often comes before a fall.

Before long the aperture in space-time in which to meaningfully act on climate change will close. It has already started.

Tag: attain impermanence

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