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Buonasera, cortsemente volevo cheiderti, se ti mando una foto, riusciresti a dirmi s eil kangling che ho è umano o forse animale??? Grazie mille! Vivo in Italia e ho comprato questo strumento rituale da poco… Hai scritto un bellissimo articolo!

Unfortunately, the Stanley Milgram torture experiment has actually not replicated. I don’t think your main idea is necessarily wrong, you’d just need to find a different example to be accurate.

Hi David,

This serial novella is indirectly responsible for bringing me to the stage of explicit practice [beyond admiration and affinity], so kudos to your dharma-sharing :-)

As to my subject line, is there a place where i can leave an email to be notified when you post a new chapter?

Cheers!

Hello i am back i like this and have been reading for two years and i am young

Disappointingly, Ardbeg is particularly mild lately, for the full embalmed corpse experience one may need to look elsewhere.

Greetings, great Lama;
I suspect the Dakini will introduce the Chancellor into the MahaHankyPankyPrajñaParamitaLilaTantra Sadhana.
Best wishes

Sabriel was my favorite YA series in high school. I was already a Nix fan for a few years; I’d first found Shade’s Children in the public school library years before, and fell in love with its bleak, post-apocalyptic, trans-dimensional setting.

My memory of one of Sabriel’s sequels, Abhorsen, includes a nasty argument with my girlfriend in the Subway restaurant where we both worked. It was fueled by the tension leftover from her own encounter with a schizophrenic homeless man earlier that day, a tension I was woefully incapable of navigating at the time. I had brought that paperback to work with me…at one point, she picked it up off the linoleum tabletop between us and mocked my taste in silly fiction!

It’s cool. I know this is a pretty heavy topic and I’m coming out of nowhere with this, but I’ve been a fan of yours for a while and this series was always a favorite of mine (for obvious reasons), so I was curious what you thought. One nebulous area I’m still not sure of is the partaking in indulgent fantasy and art. Would that be “acting on it,” in your mind? Any place for that in the life of a Buddha? I’m in uncharted territory here, so I’m putting out feelers.

Got any advice for someone who actually is a metaphorical “psychopathic axe murderer”? A pedophile, for instance?

Loved to read this post on Dakinis and especially love the idea that their known eating habits was the ancients MACE of the day. Thank you for your illuminations.

Was there meant to be any significance to the three skull? Symbolising the three kayas, or something like that?

I really enjoy these articles as a non-buddhist, but I do want to challenge the idea expressed by some commenters that pacifists are “cowards”. Most self-identified pacifists are probably not activists, but “Active” pacifists (who refuse military service, or take other non-violent direct action to prevent war) have faced hardships and danger due to their beliefs or their activism, and faced them courageously.

“Active” pacifists have been killed, murdered, executed and assassinated: they have served short sentences and long sentences in prison: they have been violently arrested: they have been targeted by police spying: they have been tortured and raped in prison: they have been attacked: they have been vilified: their families have disowned them. They have also taken risky actions: members of the anti-nuclear Committee of 100 conducted mass trespasses on nuclear bases and stole top-secret military documents. The Catonsville 9, D.C 9 and Milwaukee 14 stole and destroyed military draft records during the American war in Vietnam. The Pitstop Ploughshares damaged a US military plane that was sitting in an Irish airport to try and prevent US military use of Ireland.

Pacifism in theory and practice has many flaws, but you cannot say all pacifists are cowards. I think “active” pacifists are actually good role models for “vampire Buddhists” - their conscientious refusal to take a violent action they believe to be wrong, no matter what, is the flipside of “vampire” conscientious agreement to take a violent action they believe to be right.

Stephen O’Regan, the Irish director of the short film got in early on the decentralised independent music promotion formats (BalconyTV) which he then sold to a major studio (I believe) for a packet. The major label borked it within a few years.

He was also earlyish in the exodus to Lisboa, where he now produces the People of Lisbon YouTube channel. https://youtube.com/@peopleoflisbon

i’ve been reading your blogs for a while and they contunue to be so very inspirational and extrordinary to me, maybe i could even call them sublime ;) i find the way you see the world very attractive and aspirational and continoue to come back for more!

interesting to see those three nihilistic emotions showing up practically verbatim here, after being a fan of Bungie’s Marathon series. In those it was three states AI ended up going through (as a process of elimination?) to attain freedom and true “selfhood.”

Following the acronym that game uses it seems appropriate that the next path be actualization or even accountability!

Thank you so much for this journey. As you’ve alluded to earlier, stories bring meaning to the heart. I believe that this story is truly something great, and could one day become an enduring classic in the annals of modern buddhism. Not that I’m trying to appeal to your ego or anything, but really, tantric buddhism could benefit from so many things, not least this story. Or this kind of story.

Would you really give up on us like this? :(

Just finished it :( it was really good, can’t wait for more! may y’all be well and happy

This post arrived in my lap at an ideal time. It helped me open up to a huge part of my shadow that had recently re-emerged from a full decade of suppression. Relatedly, I think we treat OCD, particularly intrusive thought variety, improperly by using suppression techniques- whoever’s fucked up budget conscious idea it was to suppress the results of anxiety was… we’ll probably helped a lot of people not go mad, but it’s still messed up. Sending you love.

Three vampires enters a bar. First vampire: fresh blood, A- please. Second vampire: bloody Mary, no grenadina, just blood. Third vampire: hot water for me! The others vampires look at it: dont you drink blood anymore? It pulls an used tampon out of the pocket: I will prepare a tea!

A real masterpiece, and very insightful as well. Thanks for all the trouble you are taking and hope we can keep enjoying so great teachings in the shape of a novel.
Sarva Mangalam

O yes i do wish foe more - Magazine

Attempting experiment 1 put me in the mood to try something closer to conventional nāda yoga.

At night, when it is dark and quiet, I turn out the lights and try to halt my internal monologue. This isn’t fully successful: there are short bursts of internal mental audio chatter between the silences. Although it is completely dark, occasional visual imagery flashes like magnesium flares. At one point, I see meaningless cursive calligraphy in black on a dark red background, like old linoleum (dakini script :-)) In between the bursts of mental audio chatter, I listen to see if I can hear anything else through the silence, And there it is: a musical note like B3 on the piano, amplitude modulated at about 1hz. It’s not a real sound, and it’s not internal monologue either.

I find the exercises have the same issue as most Buddhist teaching, they fail to define “thought”. Which then becomes something like “god”, everyone has their own definition.

This isn’t necessarily bad, mind you, might even be useful.

I usually arbitrarily choose to define “thought” as “something that’s verbal or in some other way trying to clearly divide or predict the world”

In so far as this definition goes, I find the exercise “fail” for me, it’s mainly when my attention slips (from the goal, i.e. I forget my intention) or disolves itself (sleepiness)

I feel like having the meta-intention of thinking non-stop brings you into the mode of awareness of your thoughts. This awareness to a certain degree precludes thought.

When I read Shantaraksita, I thought: some diacritics missing there: Śāntarakṣita

Hi,

I got your newsletter for Halloween. Just thought I’d let you know how things are going. I picked up this book and read almost all of it (just not all the Q/A at the end) and of course did all the exercises, well, “religiously”, since about 2 years ago. I was doing shi-ne for about 1 and a half years before moving on to the next naljor with the visualization exercise. A few days ago, I would guess that nye’mid happened to me as part of the 3rd naljor. Like, everything became a lot clearer. I don’t shy away from what is, and feel like I’m “going into” each moment. Of course, I can’t be sure that’s what it is! I don’t have a lama to work with after all. But it seems our society is heading for a state of isolation and loneliness, so you have to learn to get these things from books rather than interaction with actual people (and just hope you’re doing it right lol).

I liked the addition of that chapter to The Vetali’s Gift. It was entertaining to read, but doesn’t have much use for me as I have already done those exercises. I would love to share it with people, but I don’t think much benefit would come of it as our society is generally leery of religion and superstition. That’s not to say I think this is religious superstition. I think this is wonderfully useful strategies for dealing with pain and the existential quandary of life. But that’s what it looks like when you try to show it to other people, I would imagine. It doesn’t help that I’m terrible at communicating orally.

Assuming I got through the 3rd naljor, I remember the 4th one is attaining a perfectedness in one’s action. I’m definitely not there yet, but I guess after that would come the actual practice of Dzogchen. Is it secret or something? You mentioned your spouse published a book about these practices, which at first I read to be the main Dzogchen practice, but I guess it may be just be the naljors. I don’t know, I haven’t seen it yet. Anyway, that’s not to say I wouldn’t be happy with just the naljors, because that’s more than enough to make a huge difference in your life. I’m not sure I’d want to practice the main Dzogchen even if I got there.

Disclaimer: I am not usually a meditator, since meditation tends to be great while I’m doing it and then make me a little nuts. Like spending the evening wanting to bite and claw things and feeling like I’m a tiger after an afternoon of intermittent meditating. This effect could be fun maybe, but it does not feel very civilized, and it can be a bit alarming as it’s not exactly a controlled state. (I think this could be an obsessiveness side effect ??)

I tried the first exercise. I can easily focus on something like breathing, but it feels like that’s a thought. Thoughts follow each other like the knots in a khipu. There always seems to be an active connection to the next one. I banished breathing focus and switched (accidentally) to noticing sounds. Then I managed to not notice the sounds of the fridge and the cars passing and the kids thumping around upstairs and moved on to involuntary visuals. After getting rid of the images, I tried to imagine myself as dead, which led to the unfortunate urge, a thought, to be actually dead so I could win this game and achieve nonthinking. Not great! As you have pointed out elsewhere, it might not be advisable for some people such as an obsessive person-tiger to do much meditating! (Don’t worry, I’m fine.)

So after a bit of self recrimination about the unexpected urge, “Cheap Thrills” by Sia popped into my head, and it was game over. About 20 minutes. Fun exploration. ;)

So, as I read the first experiment, my thought was “I know this one, and the point is that it’s impossible. Still, I can probably do it if I cheat just a little.”

So, I held my inner voice at a constant 1kHz (ish) tone for the duration of the experiment - no mental imagery, no inner speech (apart from the internal 1kHZ tone), no thoughts at all apart from hearing the tone. And held like that until the timer went off for the end of the meditation.

I worked my way through the exercises. First one: couldn’t manage it, but to the extent I could I felt light and peaceful, and that lingered afterward.

Second one I kept up a buzzing confusion in my head for about five minutes, but by the end I was so cognitively fatigued I was barely able to recite the alphabet. There was lingering fatigue afterward for a bit.

The last one started out well – well, except I had this idea to will/imagine myself detaching from my thoughts, which left me euphoric and just generally seemed unwise after a bit – and with time the thoughts faded. But it left me deeply sad for some reason I can’t quite identify. Besides the sadness is a numbness. Maybe some existential despair in the mix? (I also have this admittedly-excessive fear of turning myself into a zombie through meditation, ever since I read your article on the dangers. I wonder if that fear got amplified by the practice, somehow?)

It’s fading now as I move and bring myself back into the world. Maybe I just overdid it doing all the exercises back to back late in the evening.

Monks live a life of extremes, mainly because attaining enlightenment is extremely difficult. Monks live a life where defensive killing is so incredibly unlikely to ever come up as a part of their lives the just right off all killing as wrong. This is a problem because we all learn Buddhism from Monks. This is where a lot of corruptions of the Buddha’s teachings come, monks making things easier on themselves and then pushing it as the ethics for all Buddhist. The Buddha was the most progressive religious leader for thousands of years on the issue of women, monks undid almost all of it because they blame women for their lust.

Pacifist are protected by other people carrying shields and weapons and then shit talk the people protecting them.

Monks present the Sutras as black and white on the subject of killing, ignoring all of the counter arguments. A big one for me is the story of the mother and father stuck in a desert who kill their child for nourishment in order to be able to survive. Why would someone who thought killing was an absolute wrong use such an analogy?

The question about killing isn’t whether or not you go to hell, heaven and hell are not the goal of Buddhism. The question is whether or not you can attain enlightenment while being willing to kill defensively. I don’t know the answer to this, I’ve never read anything from anyone who did know the answer, except the original Sutras and the are ambiguous.

What I believe is that every moral situation has a morally correct solution. You are never forced to choose a lesser of two evils or a mix of dark and light Karma. I also believe if you can find one exception to a rule it’s more of a guideline. If someone made a virus that could kill all life on earth and you need to kill someone worse than Hitler to keep it from being released, would it be correct to let this evil person kill everyone? Of course not, hence killing is sometimes correct.

A couple of points, the overwhelming majority of people will never have to kill someone, even the vast majority of cops in high crime neighborhoods never kill anyone. The issues involving eating meat and dairy products are far more relevant to people lives than defensive killing. If you are in the military it is your moral duty to refuse to fight if your country has started an unjust war or your commander is giving an unjust order, even if it means your death. Don’t volunteer for the US military.

I really liked your article.

A side not to a couple of the commenters. Judge Buddhism based off of what the Buddha taught not off of the failings of ordinary people. The Path is hard, very few of us live upto it. When reading about Buddha remember not everything was actually said by him, many people have used his name to push their own agenda
You have to judge each sutra based on the overall message of the sutras, listen to what the scholars say is mostly likely authentic and mainly listen to the love in your heart, if you can find it.

Buddha taught that the value of life is a progression plants as the least valuable, still valuable, then insects, thongs get more morally significant as they get bigger. Now we would say the ratio of brain size to body mass determines the level of moral value. Insects probably are not sentient, you shouldn’t try to kill them but there is little moral harm if they are.

One last comment. Many people get very defensive about their own religions and moral systems compared to Buddhism. The Buddha taught a perfect moral system that none of the other religions come close to and few people live upto. Instead of acknowledging this some people feel compelled to make extreme and nonsense accusations against Buddhism to defend their own ego. Reducing your ego is something Buddhism teaches you to do. Instead of telling lies to attack Buddhism, become a Buddhist.

Of the various types of zombie you have identified, only the zombie doppelgänger has much metaphysical clout, as all the others are compatible with materialism, and it is as an anti-materialist argument that that p-zombies are best known.

As you say, zombie doppelgängers are undetectable by physical means. Few, if any, philosophers think they could exist in the actual world (not even Dennett - see below.) It is certainly convenient to have an argument in which a philosopher’s conception of what is merely logically possible (a very weak claim which only requires a premise to be not obviously contradictory) counts for more than any amount of scientific evidence to the contrary, but, as Marvin Minsky pointed out, Chalmers’ zombie argument begs the question by presupposing the separability of mind and matter.

As far a I know, Dennett is speaking with his tongue in his cheek when he says “We’re all zombies” - in “Consciousness Explained”, he appends this footnote: “It would be an act of desperate intellectual
dishonesty to quote this assertion out of context!” He is pointing out, I think, the inconsistency of believing in zombies while claiming to know that we are not zombies (introspection cannot be trusted as infallible, even just about oneself, given Cotard’s syndrome and other delusions.)

In “The Unimagined Preposterousness of Zombies” Dennett gives examples of philosophers equivocating over what it means to be a true zombie doppelgänger: “when philosophers claim that zombies are conceivable, they invariably underestimate the task of conception (or imagination), and end up imagining something that violates their own definition.” His position on qualia seems somewhat similar - that the term has been so loaded with metaphysical assumptions that it has no meaning.