My line would be relatively flat; I don't worry before going on vacation (which means I frequently forget things), but I don't worry about what I left behind when I'm on vacation either, and I almost never think about when I have to return. I just got back from a two-day camping trip and this was true of me then. Things like this never crossed my mind: Television, Computers, Internet, Cell Phone, other forms of electronics, video games, work or even my two cats I left at home.

I do something like Zazen to achieve this, but unlike meditation techniques that are obscured by Koans and Mantras, I utilize a keener depth psychology of which the Koans approximate. Koans and Mantras are really there for people who don't know, and don't want to know either. The Koan "See the face you had before you were born, indeed the face you had before your parents were born." points to "MU" but many things point to "MU" and the Koan is unnecessary to the one who knows "MU" already. So while many monks may spend years meditating on the Koan, I'm content to meditate on MU.

Kateigaho.com relates: When discussing Zen Buddhism, one often encounters the character for emptiness, mu, in expressions such as "no self," "no ego," "no holiness," and "no permanence." It is through the actual experience of mu — which means transcending affirmation and negation, being and nonbeing — that satori or spiritual awakening occurs and one can finally come to realize the essential spirit of Zen. Gaining some intellectual understanding is merely a first step in knowing about Zen; to enter into and deepen that understanding, one must experience mu for oneself.

That's what I was suggesting, but what material could be used to support that weight?

Just wondering if you noticed that the yogi in the picture is doing his thing above a brick ground, and his cane is apparently separated from it by a carpet. It doesn't look like he has 'anchored' his cane in the cement, but maybe he has. It seems a little more unlikely in this case, so I would surmise that maybe that isn't really a carpet and maybe his cane isn't really detached from the carpet. So the whole apparatus acts like a spring. Maybe the "carpet" is some kind of load-bearing material, though it looks quite light to bear his weight.

Illusions are spiritual matters

Where you perceive a villain or a savior; I perceive another human being.

“Look down at me and you see a fool;
look up at me and you see a god;
look straight at me and you see yourself” - Charles Manson

“These children that come at you with knives, they are your children. You taught them. I didn't teach them. I just tried to help them stand up.” - Charles Manson

“I'm not your executioner. I'm not your devil and I'm not your God. I'm Charles Manson.”

Or you could agree with me that children's entertainment generally depicts a dichotomy of people. I have watched PPG episodes on youtube and was initially torn. I like the references, even the idea that Satan is a cross-dresser. Though I'm surprised that got aired. I just don't like the Good-Guy vs Bad-Guy schtick that characterizes pretty much all popular entertainment. E.g. Autobots vs Decepticons, Humans vs Machines, etc... None of it has anything to do with reality generally. That "Good people" do bad things is pretty well proven by Milgrim and Zimbardo's research. But people almost always overlook it as unimportant. Nevertheless, as adults we are killing each other, robbing each other and disregarding each other. I thinks it humorous that we poor all this idealism into children's entertainment in hopes of raising good little children, but then we aren't good so our idealism is problematic. Instead we project our evil onto a perceived bad person or bad type of person.

Speaking of consumption; who is being fed or what part of them is being fed? Maybe the whole culture is awash in gratuitous sentimentality with the consequence of not thinking clear enough.

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
Groucho Marx

It's nationalism. His "great-great-grandmother Meta emigrated with her family to Baltimore from Völkersen, 30 kilometres from Bremen, in 1865"

It's the same reason when Canadian's become well-known south of the border Canadian citizens have to make a big deal out of it. By identifying themselves as "Canadian" and identifying the other as "Canadian" they perceive a commonality which transfers their self-worth onto the other.

That is an inaccurate resemblence; Hasselhoff has a big beer belly and that popsicle is ripped.

See, I try variously to describe things in different ways, but my message is not common at all. You'll have to try to form a new concept of self-hood more than likely, instead of relying on your current concept or you'll just misunderstand me. Sometimes I will talk about the corticothalamic complex, the representational hierarchy of the brain, and make references to authors like Thomas Metzinger, Gerald Edelman, Guilio Tononi, Janet Twenge, Hegel and so forth, but this kind of speech is even more problematic because it is hard and people would rather think I'm arrogant than wise. You go and read 100+ books on the subject and spend years in meditation and they will just think you are arrogant, not wise. That is because their self will not allow them to recognize wisdom as wisdom, they are too damn concerned with comparing themselves. When they compare themselves to someone who appears more sophisticated they get a pang of shame for the pride they feel attached to their understanding, and they hate shame so they run away from it and try to debase the thing which caused it; me. And by debasing me they can curl back up with their own pride and go back to not thinking.

The Who are one of the least understood bands, IMHO. Almost nobody seems to understand any of their music.

The Who's movie Tommy tells us more than we need to know, and most people did not like Tommy. So I guess they don't really like the Who either, they just like getting cum in their ear-pussies.

"See me, feel me, touch me." Most people would think he was whining and say "suck it up!" Completely unappreciative of what a state of mind devoid of sensation would be like. These very same people when put into sensory deprivation chambers go insane after 20 minutes. A monk or nun could sit in one indefinitely and come out as happy as when they went in, or happier. They may actually glean the mysterious "piper intoning in the distance" a tune to which we all dance. (Paraphrased quotation of Albert Einstein)

Listening to you, I get the music
Gazing at you, I get the heat
Following you, I climb the mountain
I get excitement at your feet

Right behind you, I see the millions
On you, I see the glory
From you, I get opinion
From you, I get the story - Closing song from Tommy

It is very danerous to suppose that these were just bad men without understanding the basis for their thinking. Though I'm not familiar with many of these authors, being largely authors of fiction, I am familiar in-part with Heidegger and the Nazi ideology.

We may call it an ideology but from the perspective of many, and I would maintain from the perspective of Hitler himself, this was mere recognition of fact. Though perhaps the Nazis were more than a tad myopic and self-centered in their recognition of fact, which is a disease few of us can claim to be inocculated against.

As the history of Jews in relation to the world evolved, and the following information is straight out of the Jewish Encyclopedia (JewishEncyclopedia.com), Jews became narrowly identified as money-changers and bankers. The reasons for this are religious and political.

"The Talmud (B. M. 61b) dwells on Ezek. xviii. 13 (Hebr.): "He has lent on usury; he has taken interest; he shall surely not live, having done all these abominations"; on the words with which the prohibition of usury in Lev. xxv. 36 closes: "Thou shalt be afraid of thy God"; and on the further words in which Ezekiel (l.c.) refers to the usurer: "He shall surely suffer death; his blood is upon him"; hence the lender on interest is compared to the shedder of blood."

In the ancient world lending at interest (period) was called "Usury" and was classed amongst the sins of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. But with one exception; whereas Christians and Muslims were completely barred from ever practicing usury, the Jews made an exception in the case of gentiles (non-Jews or Goyyim).

"When an Israelite lends money to a Gentile or to an "indwelling stranger" (a half-convert of foreign blood), he may and should charge him interest; and when he borrows from such a person he should allow him interest. It is the opinion of Maimonides that for Jews to charge Gentiles interest is a positive command of the written law. [The reason for the non-prohibition of the receipt by a Jew of interest from a Gentile, and vice versa, is held by modern rabbis to lie in the fact that the Gentiles had at that time no law forbidding them to practise usury; and that as they took interest from Jews, the Torah considered it equitable that Jews should take interest from Gentiles. Conditions changed when Gentile laws were enacted forbidding usury; and the modern Jew is not allowed by the Jewish religion to charge a Gentile a higher rate of interest than that fixed by the law of the land.—E. C.]"

But that is the "modern Jew" the ancient and medeival Jew could charge interest to gentiles. This alone made banking or money-lending an profitable enterprise for Jews, and as Jews were widely despised few Goyyim would patronize Jewish carpenters or masons. Instead the Gentiles capitalized on those trades and the Jews found their niche in money-lending.

"The Church, basing itself upon a mistranslation of the text Luke vi. 35 interpreted by the Vulgate "Mutuum date, nihil inde sperantes," but really meaning "lend, never despairing" (see T. Reinach in "R. E. J." xx. 147), declared any extra return upon a loan as against the divine law, and this prevented any mercantile use of capital by pious Christians. As the canon law did not apply to Jews, these were not liable to the ecclesiastical punishments which were placed upon usurers by the popes, Alexander III. in 1179 having excommunicated all manifest usurers. Christian rulers gradually saw the advantage of having a class of men like the Jews who could supply capital for their use without being liable to excommunication, and the money trade of western Europe by this means fell into the hands of the Jews."

And it was some time before Christendom opened up the doors on usury and redefined the term as "Charging excessive interest" as apart from it's original meaning "Charging interest". As Christendom and Islam became more at the mercy of Jewish money-lenders the hatred of the Jews also escalated, and by the time the Nazis were on the scene, the Jews were seen as the master controllers of the entire global economic system. This may be true to the extent that money-lending/banking is a long-standing trade for Jewish families and with much technical background to perform the task well. The morality of which can still be debated, certainly Muslims are inclined to argue the immorality of it as charging interest on loans is still barred by Sharia Law.

So from some slightly skewed perspective Jews can appear to be heartless money-grubbing elitist and racist people, but we should not forget the reasons for that appearance as well, which in some part has to do with the prejudice of ancient gentiles as well. Or the fact that "Jew" is an arbitrary and loose classification like everything else. To my understanding Hasidic Judaism is of a different nature than the orthodoxy which established the doctrine of usury within ancient Judaism.

And so I maintain it is not a lack of moral sense, but a screwed up view of the facts probably screwed up by some inner insecurity or compulsion. In post-Treaty-of-Versailles Germany the economy looked really bad and to many German minds, in particular Hitler's the Jews were behind it, and more specifically the Rothchilds. The Rothschilds were not, as far as I can tell, a biological family, and the name Rothschilds was not native to Jews. Rather Rothschilds was a compound of two German words "Rot" (red) and "Schilds" (shields). Some of them may have been related only through financial interests, the last time their wealth was made public more than 100 years ago, their cumulative worth was 1 Billion, which adjusted for inflation is about 100 Trillion dollars.

There is some truth in the conspiracy theories, but what they overlook is the essential human. Jews did not get into this line of work because of some devious or evil intent, but because of doctrinal and economic forces. And it was the myopia of the National Socialists to not see this, but only see the results of it and make dubious assumptions about the reasons for it.

Source: http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=58&letter=U&search=usury

We have a Kellogg's plant here, the scent emanating from it is enough to make you sick up to five blocks away. It smells like corn flakes to the nth power.

I feel somewhat compelled to defend idealism and provide a critique of World War II. Part of me realizes it won't be appreciated, but then there is the compulsion.

"The idealist affirms the primacy of consciousness along with its subject. This is not to be regarded as merely an arbitrary affirmation nor as a working hypothesis, but as a direct or immediate recognition, something that is beyond all doubt for the thinker personally. This is so fundamental that the idealist finds it confirmed in the very denial by the denier, since the denial itself is an act of consciousness. That which is wholly unconscious simply could not deny anything. So, when the realist opposes the thesis of the idealist, he must invoke, however unwillingly, the very quality that the idealist affirms is. It never occurs to the idealist to charge the realist with being unconscious, so he is perhaps tempermentally incapable of getting the realist's point of view. To convey his argument effectively, the realist should insist more explicitly on his own unconsciousness. In this way he might avoid adding fuel to the idealist's fire." - Franklin Merrell-Wolff, Transformations in Consciousness: The Metaphysics and Epistemology, p.97, Introceptual Idealism

Alright, I'll forgo the critique of WW2.

@colt seaver

With grace and ease.

Far from being patriotic or honorable this is war. War is war. It is all stupidity. The way I see it, I lost at least 100 children that day, not just 5. Whereas, the most of us center or valuations and consciousness around our-selves. I'm choosing here to center my conscious reference point around humanity, which means not only did I lose 100 of my American children that day, I lost plenty of Japanese children too. But I can see how to the hopelessly self-centered, these 5 merit more recognition. Its such a touching story to those of us who are obsessed with our own egotistically derived emotions.