Well, this is embarrassing, I was so busy with testing and releasing SitQuietly on the 31st and 1st; and so happy that it was out of the door after several hours of development work on the preceding weekends, that I forgot to wish my readers a happy New Year.
So, without further ado, Happy New Year to all of you! Better late than never. 
I had an interesting moment the other day, interesting and somewhat unsettling. I realised that the way I was being seen by someone wasn’t the way I’d thought. This lead me to a train of thought.
We all put a lot of effort into how we come across, we care how we’re seen by others. This goes to various degrees, depending on the situation and the individual. But at what point does this behaviour become unethical? Is it, in spite of our best efforts, ultimately futile?
No matter how carefully we craft our public faces, how carefully we choose our words, they will be seen through someone else’s lens. The persons you and I are, are the result of our lifelong Karma; choice after choice, event after event. This is as true of the person you project to the world as it is of the person I am, as I watch your actions and hear your words. We see each other through the lenses of our Karma.
Ultimately I cannot control how you see me, too much depends on the lens through which you view me. For me to try and try, ultimately results in me taking (or trying to take) too much control over your perceptions. Thus taking what is not freely given and violating a precept.
For example, I support and have written Free Software. I do this because I wish have more control of the software that runs my computer; I wrote SitQuietly for the Linux platform because I wanted to give something back to the community, however small, for all the good their software had done me.
But, through someone else’s eyes, am I the enemy? No matter how compassionate my motives and aims? Think not? Look again….
When using open source makes you an enemy of the state.
Should Open Source Be An Enemy Of The State?
My entire Karma led me to this point, if you are an intellectual property lobbyist or an advocate of certain proprietary software companies then you will quite possibly see me as the enemy. Whether I want you to or not. But drawing on my point above, for me to go too far in trying to change your mind isn’t just unethical, it’s unskilful. At what point does it cause suffering for us both? I’ll also wager the attempt will fail. So it would seem easier for me to present myself as you find me, and simply allow you the room to make your mind up then live and let live. No, not just better, more ethical, more skilful.
Interesting train of thought, isn’t it?
Well, this is an interesting thing. I recently treated myself to an Android smartphone, and was looking at my site on there.
I decided it was a bit unwieldy, to put things politely. So I did a little hunting and found a great plugin called “WordPress Mobile Edition”. I’ve installed and tested it, it seems to be working very well and I can honestly say that I’m very pleased.
It was created by Crowd Favorite, so here’s a big vote of thanks to them!
On my spiritual journey, I’ve been through a few places. I’ve investigated Paganism, Atheism, Taoism and Buddhism. Of course, when I started on this journey, I started as an Anglican.
Now, I’ve looked in depth to a lot of places, but not given Anglicanism the same viewing. When I saw the Anglican Church apologise to Darwin, I felt that said a great deal that they could do that. On closer inspection, it seems Darwin was Anglican himself and that Anglican community was (on the whole) quite quick to accept evolution.
So I plan to take a closer look at my home team (if you’ll pardon the football/soccer analogy) and see what I can find there.
The Anglican church is on the whole a very liberal one, not fire and brimstone, so I feel much safer doing this exploration there than with a bible thumping literalist organisation. But as I’m sure my regular readers know, I have no time for scriptural literalness and consider it to be getting lost. I have a couple of great little metaphors for that which I’ll save for my next post.
I’m also going to try a change in tack. When I philosophise about something I’ll write an article rather than trying to spread things over multiple shortish posts.
So I have a book on the origin of the Gospels, and it also examines their writing style. It’s already given me ideas for further reading and material of my own to develop, watch this space!
Well, I had an interesting experience in Secondlife last night, at a sim called “The Buddha Center” they showed a BBC video on the life of the Buddha. As aide from the odd technical hiccup it was an enjoyable experience and when I found the video on YouTube, I thought I’d share it with everybody!
It’s 50 minutes in length, so be sure you have a cup of Tea when you click play, and the DVD purchase notice will vanish after the first 30 seconds or so.
Here’s a fun experiment, my friend Peter over at The Buddha Diaries has started a meme on the above subject and is asking his blogger friends to carry it on. I’m going to very interested to see how far this spreads.
The rules are really quite simple:
1. Answer the questions
2. Link back to the original meme
3. Tag others to participate
So without further ado, let’s get stuck in!
1) How do you sleep at night? Is your sleep affected by the national angst? Do you drop off easily, as you always did? Or does it take a while to get to sleep?
Generally, I sleep soundly, when I eventually get to sleep. I’m a bit of a martyr to lying awake tossing and turning, depending on what I’ve been doing before I turn in. I tend to wake quite early as well, then lie there listening for the alarm.
2) What strategies, if needed, do you use to get to sleep? Pills? Sheep? Late night television shows? And/or…?
I’ve used a few over the years, one was a relaxation technique in which you begin at the feet and imagine each part of your body (feet, shins, knees, thighs, etc) to be warm and heavy. Another is to mentally release my grip on whatever is keeping me awake, then imagine it floating away. Sometimes, it’s just a quick bathroom trip.
3) Do you wake up in the middle of the night, plagued by obsessive thoughts?
No, once I’m asleep, I rarely wake. But, lying awake plagued by obsessive thoughts, guilty as charged I’m afraid!
4) What strategies do you have to get back to sleep?
In all honesty, I’d just use the ones from question 2.
5) Are your dreams affected? Are they more anxious than before? Do they wake you up in a sweat? Or are they peaceful, innocent, undisturbed by the general malaise?
Here’s an interesting one. I rarely remember my dreams, those that I do recall are either terrfiying or just plain surreal. I’ve often wondered why I only rarely recall them, and at one point in my life, I genuinely believed I didn’t dream at all.
So, in the spirit of the original post, I’d like to impose on the following people:
I was wandering on my lunch hour and found a post on Drops of Water that made me stop and think ‘how true!”
She writes of a person who has attained the Tao, you can put her in any company, no matter how low. She’ll be touched by it, but unstained. An image she gives is of a lotus growing in mud.
This is an image that resonates with me, my belief is that spirituality must be workman like. Yes, there is spirituality in a lotus or a meditation cushion, but that spirit is just as present in the dirty and profane places. I also feel that this imagery makes the important point, by association, that we should not use the fact that we are spiritual or religious as a reason to cut ourselves off from the world.
I feel that spirituality must start in the mud to be of use, that’s one of the reasons I identify more with Zen, the enlightenment they espouse is something that must survive the rigors of day to day living, not sat aloof in a monastery.
Allow me to refer to the Taiji symbol, I’ve said before that I consider the profane and darker side of the things to be as conducive to spiritual development as the sweet light side of things. I think this, because we all have a dark side and I consider it to be very dangerous to deny this side in our spiritual practice. If we do, how can our spiritual development ever be truly complete?
