From The Study-a conversation about possibilities

    

A Common Humanity-thinking about love

Love takes many forms, some of which are in tension with one another and some of which are in tension with morality. The reasons why love commends itself to morality are also reasons why it offends it. Moralists will try to resolve this tension by moralising our understanding of what love really is and by declaring Othello's passion to be many things but never love. If they were to succeed in denigrating all love that conflicts with morality as false love, then they would undermine what is best in our morality— the faith that human beings are precious beyond reason, beyond merit and beyond what most moralisers will tolerate.

Raymond Gaita...
A Common Humanity


Common Humanity is a beautifully written book about how the humanity of our fellow human beings is sometimes not fully visible to us. Drawing on the examples of the Holocaust, the David Irving Affair, the case of Mary Bell and the taking of children of mixed blood from Aboriginal parents in Australia, Raimond Gaita examines the reasons for this. Amongst them, he argues, are a moralistic conception of morality that runs deep in our culture and an impoverished conception of reason and understanding. Both encourage a false opposition between moral judgement and compassion and between head and heart. 

The Sane Asylum Wisdom Series

The grand project of epistemology, to separate all true knowledge from false knowledge, that was the philosophical goal of the scientific era that has collapsed. In its place two new epistemological projects have been revealed. The first is the project that is showing up in cognitive science and biology to answer the question of what is knowledge–presumed to be answerable in a naturalistic way. The second project is more diverse. It covers an array of questions of how knowledge is used. There are questions of whether or how much is knowledge embodied, what is the meaning and status of knowledge communities, what are pragmatic ways of resolving differences beyond the appeal to truth, and how does one understand special types of knowing such as intuition or particular cultural ways of knowing....Jake Keenen, Epistemology Express

From The Study-a conversation of possibilities

Surfing the Mental Ecology:
On Doing the Buddha-Descartes Boogie(Written for Burning Man "Festival," August 2003)

These are the spiritual climes that try human souls. Everywhere, to attach or not to attach. Everywhere, another "I think, therefore blah, blah, blah." And of course we live in the midst of an information explosion that runs in parallel with ecosystem stress rumblings.

In the solutions realm of changed mindsets, there is a way out of the polarized worlds of the external and the internal–of science and psychology/spiritual practices. There is the inter-world of knowledge formed by actual human entanglements with objects of interest. Three facets are worth bringing to mind:

1. Each of us is tied very specifically to the outer world by our cares, interests and knowledge.

2. A world of meaning is formed from all the knowledge entanglements of individuals, cultures and corporate bodies. This world works as any ecology where some meanings proliferate, are selected, work in certain cultural environments and so forth.

3. To acknowledge the active and extensive world of meaning that humans add to context-defining organisms is to have the choice of leaving the intolerant and boring cultural realms of various forms of objectivism for embodied forms of living where transactions of meaning are care-to-care rather than object versus object.

In Buddhist terms we are our attachments and there are many. But unlike Buddhism we can choose not to run from our attachments but rather to frolic in the mental ecology like a Zen gardener.

In Cartesian epistemology terms there are obvious peaks of agreement where the mental ecology finds just one species of meaning and where things appear–ohmigod–“objective.” No matter how wild the Zen gardener in the ecology of meaning it doesn’t preclude a little bending to the priorities of our interdependence.

Dance, dance ... with my body and with my mind, straight and high until I die.

Inside The Sane Asylum-Meet the Orginal homesteaders

OLE GOAT MAN-is like a wandering sage. He lives on the outskirts with his goat named Goat. He claims we all have a goat but we just happen to see his. Most people will call him crazy but here, we think he provides "Illusions of the Truth".

"There's an old man who keeps a small herd of goats on the other side of the Seam. I don't know his real name; everyone just calls him the Goat Man."

―Katniss Everdeen on the Goat Man

Goat Man, have you ever been married?

"Yes. The Good Lord has blessed me with three wives. As it turns out, that proved to be three to many. The Good Book says there will be seven wives for every man. Well Somebody else can have my other four".

Any words of advice?

"Yes. Eat Coca nuts while you still have your teeth".

Ches
Americas original goat man

From The Study-a conversation of possibilities

A conversation of possibility or one of action

By being clear about which conversation you’re intending to have, you’ll give yourselves much more room to explore, to breathe, and to create something new. And you’ll create a space in which hopes, aspirations, and creativity can take wing.

The Sane Asylum Quote Series

From The Study- a conversation of possibilities

A Common Humanity

A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Einstein 

From The Study...a conservation of possibilities

Is it possible...a common humanity?

Follow From The Study Series. We will begin exploring A Common Humanity and the possibility

of universal values. Can we identify our better impulses and act on them...just a conversation of possibility...Doc

Searching for answers...George Rodrique

"The yellow eyes are really the soul of the dog. He has this piercing stare. People say the dog keeps talking to them with the eyes, always saying something different. People who have seen a Blue Dog painting always remember it. They are really about life, about mankind searching for answers. The dog never changes position. He just stares at you. And you’re looking at him, looking for some answers, ‘Why are we here?,’ and he’s just looking back at you, wondering the same. The dog doesn’t know. You can see this longing in his eyes, this longing for love, answers."
— Rodrigue on the Blue Dog

From The Sea

  

Down by the Sea...29.5381*N, 81.2233* W

At dawn I chart my song
I call to all who live by the shore

I flung my net out into the sea
where the sand and silver shines its lyric lines

The waves begin to laugh as the helmsman sings
And I smile at the wrinkled shore and the salt from her soft green hair

Such are tales of ancient lore
As the helmsman chants his haunting song

Chant your song, make it loud and clear
So full of longing, the sea birds poise to hear

Never a fish have I caught so fair
Never a dream intangled in my nets have I seen

The helmsman answered, learn the secrets of the sea
Only the brave will comprehend its mystery

I smile at the wrinkled shore
Unraveling velvet flows of the maiden's hair

I held her close where at rest she would not be
I sang the helmsman's song for her beauty that I see

Helmsman, teach me that song till my heart is full
Tell me all the secrets of the sea

A joy to brief...then rolled away with the tide
Tomorrow...tomorrow I will again comprehend her mystery...

Doc

Sane Asylum Wisdom Series

"Teachings" are tools not truths; points of view that are laid aside once they have served their purpose. ~Carl Jung

A funny thing happened on the way to therapy...

"You might want to try and be more informed instead of just being opinionated."

Dr. Ego
The Sane Asylum

A funny thing happened on the way to therapy

Do we create the moment or does the moment create us---or--do they both create the opportunity for the synchronicity of awakening to who we are?

The Sane Asylum Wisdom Series

Do not try to become anything. Do not make yourself into anything. Do not be a meditator. Do not become enlightened. When you sit, let it be. When you walk, let it be. Grasp at nothing. Resist nothing. ~  Ajahn Chah