Work is a False Idol 📰

From my view down here on the carpet, I see a system that, even if it bounces back to “normal,” I have no interest in rejoining, a system that is beginning to come undone.

[ … ]

While jobs are sustenance, careers are altars upon which all else is sacrificed.

I’m in this camp 👆

Finished reading Educated by Tara Westover 📚

I had started on a path of awareness, had perceived something elemental about my brother, my father, myself. I had discovered the ways in which we had been sculpted by a tradition given to us by others, a tradition of which we were either willfully or accidentally ignorant. I had begun to understand that we had lent our voices to a discourse whose sole purpose was to dehumanize and brutalize others–because nurturing that discourse was easier, because retaining power always feels like the way forward.

Finished reading The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts 📚

Deliberate thought finds itself unable to control the upsurge of the beast in man–a beast more “beastly” than any creature of the wild, maddened and exasperated by the pursuit of illusions. Specialization in verbiage, classification, and mechanized thinking has put man out of touch with many of the marvellous powers of “instinct” which govern his body. It has, furthermore, made him feel utterly separate from the universe and is own “me.” And thus when all philosophy gas dissolved ub relativism, and can make fixed sense of the universe no longer, isolated “i” feels miserabl insecure and panicky, finding the real world a flat contradiction of its whole being.

Currently reading The Essential Dogen 📚

“When you prepare food, do not see with ordinary eyes and do not think with ordinary mind. Take up a blade of grass and construct a treasure king’s land; enter into a particle of dust and turn the great dharma wheel. Do not arouse disdainful mind when you prepare a broth of wild grasses; do not arouse joyful mind when you prepare a fine cream soup. Where there is no discrimination, how can there be distaste? Thus, do not be careless even when you work with poor materials, and sustain your efforts even when you have excellent materials. Never change your attitude according to the materials. If you do, it is like varying your truth when speaking with different people; then you are not a practitioner of the way”

This paragraph (in particular, the section I highlighted) hit me like a brick. Though I can also relate to Dogen with the cooking analogy, I’m guilty of this attitude when creating. “If only I had that effect pedal or that physical analogue synth I could do x… instead I am stuck with this “crummy” software modelled plug-in or [what I perceive to be] not as good speakers.” This mindset can lead to undesirable results (for no reason other than delusion) or no results at all.

I love simple words that express complex, yet specific, ideas:

Hsüan is, of course, a metaphorical darkness-not the darkness of night, of black as opposed to white, but the sheer inconceivability which confronts the mind when it tries to remember the time before birth, or to penetrate its own depths.

Finished reading: The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada 📚

Finished reading: The Changeling by Kenzaburo Ōe 📚

According to Fukuzawa, virtually every word that’s used to describe people can be a two-sided coin. For example, depending on your tone, frugal can mean admirably thrifty or despicably stingy, while rough and ready could imply either courageousness or bellicosity. The exception, he says, is enbo.

No matter how you look at it, enbo is a complete waste of time; time; there’s no way you can put a positive spin on envy, bitterness, and resentment, or turn those emotions into positive human traits. I’ve read a few Kenzaburo Oe books, most recently “Death by Water”, and was aware of the “Kogito” character loosely resembling the author himself.

Lately I’ve been into the films of director/writer Juzo Itami. He has a tragic backstory due to writing and directing a satire “Minbo” about the Yakuza which led to him being attacked and hospitalized by the Yakuza (his hospital stay inspired his next film “The Last Dance”) and later jumping to his death.

As I was reading “The Changeling” I couldn’t help but find the “Goro” character very familiar to Juzo, “could it be?,” I thought… This led to a quick Wikipedia search on the book itself and lo and behold:

Goro Hanawa (塙 吾良, Hanawa Gorō) - A legendary filmmaker who commits suicide. He is Kogito’s brother-in-law and best friend Goro is based on Juzo Itami, who was Ōe’s brother in law. Talk about worlds colliding! This made the book even more interesting as it became a fantastical sort of biography on both the author and Juzo.

Talk about worlds colliding! This made the book even more interesting as it became a fantastical sort of biography on both the author and Juzo.

Finished reading: No longer human by Osamu Dazai 📚

Society. I felt as though even I were beginning at last to acquire some vague notion of what it meant. It is the struggle between one individual and another, a then-and-there struggle, in which the immediate triumph is everything. Human beings never submit to human beings. Even slaves practice their mean retaliations.

Human beings cannot conceive of any means of survival except in terms of a single then-and-there contest. They speak of duty to one’s country and suchlike things, but the object of their efforts is invariably the individual, and, even once the individual’s needs have been met, again the individual comes in. The incomprehensibility of society is the incomprehensibility of the individual.

Finished reading: The Bodhicaryavatara: A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life: The 8th Century classic in 21st Century language by Santideva 📚

A person who is completely blinded by illusion and believes it to be reality is in a very difficult position. Without the perspective that is gained from stepping outside of the illusion and seeing it in a detached way they will remain in the cycle of suffering.

Finished reading: The Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma by Red Pine 📚

Those who worship don’t know, and those who know don’t worship.